Closer Than Blood

“No. Nothing.” He pulled the covers up over his head. Laura stood there a second, wondering if he’d been having trouble with his girlfriend. She’d considered asking Parker if he wanted to invite the girl over for dinner, but she doubted he was in the mood for that. When he said he wanted to be left alone, she didn’t doubt it.

“All right,” she said.

“I’ll have some dinner for you later.”

“I’m not hungry, Mom. I’m going to sleep.” When his bedroom door shut, he lifted the covers. Despite toweling off after his marathon shower, he was damp again. Sweat collected on his chest and beaded in the small of his back. He felt a wave of nausea come over him. He rocked himself, like a baby, gently and slowly. He remembered what Tori said to him the last time they made love.

“You will never understand the lengths people will go for true love until you do what needs to be done to keep us together. I’ve done it. I will never let you down.”

“I love you, Tori,” he said, as tears came to his eyes. Laura Connelly paced in the kitchen. She put his dinner into the refrigerator and wondered what she could do. She had worried nonstop about Parker after Alex’s murder. She had suggested counseling, but he’d insisted that he was working through it on his own. She assumed that, whoever his girlfriend was, she was a good listener. He needed that. Laura couldn’t reach him. She couldn’t seem to get him to open up to her. She went to the laundry room and unloaded the dryer. As she folded her son’s clothes, she considered if she’d been a good-enough mother. Had she given him what he needed to get through a difficult time? “I love you, Parker. I want to help you. It seems you are drowning here. I’m your mother, your lifeline. Give me a chance.” For the first time, she noticed a small vinyl pouch tucked into the bottom of the hamper. She picked it up and read its faded label.

LORD’S GRACE COMMUNITY CHURCH

Where did this come from? she thought, as she unzipped it. It was a packet of one- and five-dollar bills. Where did this come from? Her heart rate picked up. She zipped it fast, like closing it quickly would make the whole thing disappear. Parker, what did you do?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Tacoma

The headquarters of the Tacoma Police Department was tucked amid strip malls and chain restaurants on a bleak stretch of South Pine, not far from the Tacoma Mall. And if it is true that all police departments have their own vibe, Tacoma’s was unique in its very blandness. One in Arizona could pass for a Mexican restaurant and one in Florida had a stream running through it that made it seem like a tourist attraction. Aside from the fact that the building was built and operated with green technology, Tacoma’s distinction was the fact that its Fleet Services division was housed in a renovated Costco warehouse store. That’s right. A Costco. One woman arched her brow while looking at the new three-story building that loomed above the old warehouse parking lot.

“I remember when I could get a hot dog and a Coke here for a buck fifty. I guess they must be dispensing justice in economy size here now,” she said. Eddie Kaminski chugged a tepid Mountain Dew in his cubicle on the second floor. Included among his many lifestyle changes after his wife dropped him was giving up coffee. It wasn’t good for him, and sipping tea seemed a bit fey for a police department’s must-have machismo. That the soft drink he was swilling was nothing but a citrus, caffeine-stoked version of coffee without the brown color wasn’t lost on Kaminski. He simply saw the drink as a small but necessary step away from a java habit that left him jittery and anxious.

“Like using a nicotine patch to wean a guy off smoking,” he told Lindsey when she caught him chugging the sweet stuff after a run along Ruston Way.

“Dad, that’s dumb,” Lindsey said.

“There’s tons of sugar in that and as much caffeine as a couple of cups of Charbucks.”

“Maybe so. But it’s one third the price.”

“It’s gross, and price isn’t everything.” You sound like your mother, he thought, but he didn’t say it. While he waited for Darius Fulton to show up, Kaminski tidied up his desk. The neighbor had seemed cautious on the phone.

“What I need to say to you needs to be said man to man.” The choice of words was peculiar.

A half hour later, he met Darius in the lobby. When they shook hands, the detective noticed that Darius’s hands seemed clammy. The weather outside was cool, unseasonably so. Sweaty hands usually meant nervousness or anxiety.

“Let’s talk in an interview room upstairs,” Kaminski said. Darius nodded.

“The lot was full. So I left my car in a one-hour visitor’s spot across the street. Is that going to be enough time?”

“That depends on what it is you have to tell me.” The interview room was as impersonal as could be, purposely so. It was, like all good interview rooms, set up to keep distractions to the minimum. It wasn’t an unfriendly place, just decidedly blank. Slate blue carpeting, nothing on the wall, blue molded chairs, and a mirrored viewing window.

“Take a seat,” Kaminski said.

“Need anything? Water?”

“You really drink that crap?” Darius said, indicating the can of Mountain Dew that the detective carried with him. Kaminski smiled.

“Long story. But, yeah. Want one?”

“Pass. Water is fine.” Kaminski retrieved a bottle of Dasani and a notepad.

“You said something was bothering you when you called me.”

“Right.”

“And what is that?”

“This isn’t easy. I feel pretty stupid. And it might not be anything. But you know I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened over at Tori’s place.” Tori’s place. The words resonated in an exceedingly familiar way.

“You have? Good. You should. You, Ms. Connelly, and the shooter are our only witnesses.” Darius nodded.

“Yeah, that night.”

“Have you remembered something new?” Sweat collected above Darius’s eyebrows.

“It isn’t that. It’s, well . . .” An attractive female officer walked by the sliver of a window in the door and Darius used the pleasant visual distraction to stop the conversation. His eyes met Kaminski’s and, if he had expected some kind of vague semblance of male bonding, it was not the right time or place. Not in the middle of a murder investigation, for sure.

“Dude, get to it,” Kaminski said.

“What are you trying to tell me?” Darius looked down. His eyes were awash with worry.

“I don’t want to get involved in this mess. But I don’t think I have any choice. I’ve weighed the implications of my silence and, well, I guess I have to come out with it.” The detective set his pen down. His eyes fixed on the man on the other side of the city-issue, Formica-topped desk.

“You involved in this?” he asked. Darius waved his hands as if pushing away the accusation.

“Oh, hell no. Not at all.”

“Then what is it?”

“I had an affair with Tori. I mean, it really wasn’t an affair. We messed around a little. Only once.” If Eddie Kaminski or any other cop had a five-dollar bill for every time someone said whatever they had done was “only one time,” they’d be on the beach in Maui with a mai tai and a beautiful babe at his side.

“Can’t say as I blame you,” Kaminski said.

“She’s easy on the eyes.” Darius nodded.

“Tell me about it. I mean, yeah, she is, and that’s probably the biggest part of it. You know, look at me, I’m not young. I’m not really handsome, though I looked a lot better in my day. I’m just a big fool.”

“You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last. Tell me, if it only happened one time—”

“Yes, that’s what I said.” Kaminski leaned back; he hadn’t been trying to push the guy, but it was clear that’s how he’d taken it.

“Okay. Tell me.”

“She invited me over to help her with some bogus project. She gave me the look, you know.”

“The look?”

“The look—I’m lonely and you’ll do.” Kaminski took a drink.

“Yeah. I know it.”

“We ended up having sex right then and there, but that was it. I wanted seconds the next day—like a dumbass thinking all of a sudden I had something some woman wanted other than my wallet.” Darius talked about how they’d met at the lecture at the museum, how she’d told him that her husband hadn’t been paying attention to her.

“She flat-out said she wanted some fun, no strings.”

“But you wanted more. You wanted a repeat.” Darius looked away, briefly.

“Yeah, but she didn’t,” he said.

“End of the story. I thought you’d want to know. You know, in case she tried to pawn herself off as the poor widow. Missing her man.”

“I get that. I need to know something else. I need you to be straight with me.”

“I have been.”

“Maybe so.”

“No maybe. I have been.” They talked about the specifics of the crime scene, a subject of keen interest to Kaminski.

“Are you remembering anything different about that night?”

“Look, I resent what you’re trying to imply.”

“Not trying. Just asking.”

“No, nothing different. She arrived on my doorstep bloody and crying, and I called nine-one-one.”

“Did you kiss her?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“Just asking, remember.” Darius Fulton’s face went white, then red.

“No, I did not. She was hurt. I called for help. Your guys came.” The detective leaned closer, pushing the limits of the man’s personal space.

“Did you have anything to do with her husband’s death?”

“Hell no! That’s why I’m here. I knew that if the word got out that I tapped her, I’d be on the chopping block.”

“Tapped” her? It was like an old man using a younger person’s vernacular. It didn’t fit. It made him look older and more foolish. As Kaminski saw it, the move on the woman across the street was probably as much about being still in the game as it was about having sex. Darius hadn’t wanted to be left behind, thrown away. It was a scenario that mirrored his own. Though he had a ten-year cushion, he was damned if he was headed that way.

“I’m going to need to write this up,” Kaminski said.

“You’re going to need to sign it.” Darius Fulton nodded.

“Yeah. I’ll sign it. But this isn’t going to be in the papers, is it?” Kaminski shook his head.

“Not hardly. Last time I looked it was legal to mess around with a neighbor’s wife. Tacky, sure. But, yeah, totally legal.”

Lindsey Kaminski knew her father didn’t take care of himself when he was deep into a case. She remembered when growing up that she and her mother had more than their share of meals without him. He’d be out on a case, at his office, and, at the end of his marriage, away in some bar drinking too much.

“Daddy,” she said, when she reached him on the phone that evening, “want to get some Chinese?”

“You know I would love to, babe, but I’m up to my neck in alligators.”

“How’s that case going?”

“Making some progress,” he said. She knew when her dad did and didn’t want to discuss a case. Usually it was because it wasn’t going all that well.

“Good,” she said.

“But you have to eat sometime, you know.” He let out a sigh.

“I’m going to be at the office for a while. I’ll get something later.” When Lindsey hung up, she went about the business of putting together a care package expressly for her dad. The year before her mother dumped him, he’d tried to get back into the fatherhood role in earnest. Trying so hard to win over his daughter. He used to make care packages for her when she had a big calculus test. She hated calculus, and her dad’s thoughtfulness made it a lot easier to endure. Her mother was out with her boyfriend, and Lindsey went through the fridge and pantry to try to put together something he’d like. She knew he was working on losing weight, but he also loved Fig Newtons—and since she hated those cookies above all others, they were easy to part with. She added a couple of bottles of water and an “encouragement” card that she’d bought for a friend whom she no longer wanted to encourage. She’d never seen the inside of his apartment, but maybe he’d invite her in. Just before she started to knock, she heard voices. Her father’s and the softer voice of a woman. Lindsey was thrilled that, just maybe, her dad was seeing someone. It was about time. She left the package by the door and stepped quietly away. Later that night, she texted him about her foiled delivery. He texted back right away.

I WISH! THAT WAS LANDLADY! NEIGHBOR ABOVE HAD LEAKY SHOWER. LOL. MY LIFE SUX.

With Parker’s eighteenth birthday only days away, Laura Connelly fretted about what she might do to celebrate the milestone. Every time she broached the subject, her son just dismissed it. He said that he didn’t want any fuss.

“Drew and I will go out and do something, Mom. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“I wasn’t suggesting Chuck E. Cheese, Parker.”

“Whatever,” he said.

“What do you mean, whatever? What do you want to do? Maybe I could meet this girlfriend of yours.”

“I highly doubt that, Mom.” Later, Laura would beat herself up over how blind she’d been to what was going on in her son’s life. How she’d missed all the signs that he was slipping away. He’d been more remote than ever and she had no idea what he’d gotten himself into. Or what that pouch of money from the church meant. Part of her didn’t want to know.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Tacoma

The cab ride from Seattle to Tacoma was a bleary-eyed mess. Lainie O’Neal had sold her Ford Focus for cash, thinking that she’d be able to get by on Seattle’s overhyped bus and light rail, Sounder Transit. The money helped in the short term. But not right then. She had expected to get to the hospital in an hour, but a recent miscalculation by the engineers working for the Washington State Department of Transportation had turned the primary link between the two cities into a parking lot as five lanes merged to one. It had been three days since Tori called, telling Lainie that she needed her to come, “but not right now.” Everything, even an emergency, was ruled by the whims of her twin sister. As the yellow cab waited behind a minivan with two children watching a DVD, Lainie thought once more of the last time she’d seen her sister. It had been years. So many, in fact, that she’d stopped thinking of Tori every day as she had when she first made it clear that she had no room in her life for any family member. It was a dark time, seared in her memory like a hot blade against her cheek. Unforgettable. Unstoppable. She fought the memory as the traffic in the so-called fast lane crawled southward to Tacoma. Maybe this is a new start, she thought. She needs me. As traffic centipeded past the Tacoma Dome, a message envelope appeared on the screen of Lainie’s cell phone. It was from Tori. If anyone had asked Lainie a week ago if her sister had ever called, Facebooked, MySpaced, or texted her, she would have laughed out loud. She might even have asked, “What sister?” But not right then. Tori had, indeed, called and texted. She was making up for lost time and using whatever means were available to reel in a sister she’d ignored for years.

IVE BEEN DISCHARGED. MEET ME AT 222 N.JUNETT.

Lainie gave the driver the address.

“Nice part of town,” he said, glancing in the rearview mirror. Lainie looked out the window.

“Figures,” she said. Tori always knew how to get what she wanted.

When Lainie thought of her sister and how she became the way she did, she was transported back to the times and places of their childhood in Port Orchard. In her mind’s eye, Lainie saw Tori as she saw herself. As twins, they’d come into the world as a matched set. They’d been dressed alike. Voices were often mistaken for each other, particularly when answering the telephone. For the longest time, when they were elementary-school age, Lainie thought they were the same person—replicas of each other. Lainie assumed that their feelings mirrored each other’s, too. Why wouldn’t they? A few things stood out that she could pull from her memory and revisit. They were ten. Their father, who literally couldn’t kill a fly, had the misfortune to back over the O’Neals’ ancient, bag-of-bones Siamese cat, Ling-Ling. It was a Sunday morning and they had been on their way to church when the bump and crunch occurred. Their dad sprang from the driver’s side as if he’d been jolted by a hot wire. Their mom followed. Tori and Lainie were in the backseat, at first unaware. Lainie caught the look of anguish on her parents’ faces and watched her father bend down to pick up the cat. She was limp, bloodied, lifeless. It was apparent only then what had transpired—what the bump had been.

“Daddy ran over Ling-Ling,” Lainie said, starting to cry. She unbuckled her seat belt and swung open the door, dropped her feet onto the pavement of the driveway. She swiveled and looked in the direction of sister.

“Are you coming?” Tori didn’t bother to look up. She had a Sweet Valley Twins book in her lap, her eyes fixed on a page, as she continued to read.

“Tori, Daddy ran over Ling-Ling!”

“He didn’t mean to and the cat was old,” she said. The cat was old, and their father hadn’t meant to kill it. Lainie understood that. Everyone understood. But Tori’s observation came with a disturbingly cool demeanor. Snow on ice. That afternoon when they buried Ling-Ling under a pear tree that never fruited, Lainie let the tears flow. Her father held her hand and squeezed. His eyes had moistened, as had their mother’s. Tori’s eyes had puddled, too. Lainie thought that the wave of emotion that swept around them as they placed an avalanche of pink and white dahlia blossoms on the tiny grave was genuine.

“I thought that you didn’t care about Ling-Ling,” Lainie said later when the twins tucked themselves into their beds that night.

“You cried. I saw you.” Tori rolled onto her side and her blond hair tumbled onto the pale blue pillowcase. She looked at Lainie.

“A cat is a cat,” she said.

“I know she meant a lot to you, Mom, Dad. We’ll have other cats, other pets. She’s an animal and she was going to die soon anyway.” Lainie didn’t know her sister. Later, she’d play the scene over and wonder if she ever had. Tori’s matter-of-fact take on things seemed clear and emotionless. She was right about Ling-Ling. The O’Neals did have other cats. What resonated with Lainie was not about the cat at all. It was about how devastated their father had been by killing Ling-Ling. The cat was a pet, for sure. She was, in fact, very old. But none of that mattered. Their father was so sorry for what he’d accidentally done. Lainie’s tears were really for him. She didn’t think Tori ever got that part of it.

“She never understood how other people really felt,” Lainie confided to a friend many years after the incident.

“It wasn’t in her to really, really look into the heart of another person to see their suffering. Or even their joy.”

Pewter-colored Commencement Bay faded from view as the taxi headed up the hill from downtown toward the Stadium District, then on to North Junett. Lainie hadn’t spent much time in Tacoma, having fallen victim to the prejudice that came from thinking that Seattle was the Northwest’s only real city. Tacoma had been the butt of jokes since she’d been a child. The “aroma of Tacoma” was a favorite derision of those who didn’t live there, as it evoked the stinky smell of the old pulp mills and copper smelter that no longer spewed any stink. The jokes, like a residual smell, still lingered. It never occurred to her that her sister lived there. In fact, it never crossed her mind that she might bump into her in some random way like that. They’d been apart so long, the ties felt irrevocably severed. The phone call from the hospital changed all of that. She nodded off in the deep dark of the taxi’s backseat, only to awaken as the car slowed in front of the gargantuan Victorian. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and looked out through the fingerprint-marred window. A swirl of apricot blossoms clung to the large turret that overlooked the street. It was a gingerbread house with sugar. It was Candy Land. Chutes and Ladders. The house was a girl’s fantasy of the most charming home ever imagined. And her sister lived there.

“I guess she married well,” Lainie said to the driver as she swung open the taxi’s door. A blast of cool air smacked her in the face and she pulled back a bit. The driver nodded.

“Oh yeah, that she did. She had it good. Real good. You know, until the end.” He must have read the news paper or saw the story on TV, she thought. She noticed a fluttering remnant of yellow crime-scene tape on a walkway lamppost. That also might have tipped him off. She reached for her purse and started to rummage for her wallet, full of maxed-out credit cards and four twenties. She paid the man and, with suitcase trailing like a dog on a leash, Lainie trudged up the brick herringbone-patterned walkway to the front door, which was already parted to let her inside. Ten steps away, her heart pounded as she braced herself. Immediately, she saw her face. Her face. The door opened wider.

“I knew I could count on you,” Tori said. It was Lainie’s voice, too. The voice that confused any who called the O’Neals’ wanting either of the girls from elementary to high school.

“I’m here and it’s cold outside,” Lainie said. Despite a recent violent injury and a hospital stay, Tori had pulled herself together. Her makeup was flawless, understated. She wore a white robe with what appeared to be egret feathers—a little Sunset Boulevard, Lainie thought. Her hair was chic and lighter, almost the color they’d shared when they were little girls and looked exactly alike. Lainie wasn’t sure, at least not completely, but as she ran her eyes down her sister’s body, it looked as though Tori had breast implants. She wasn’t heavy in the face, but she was definitely heftier up there.

“When did you get those?” Lainie asked, staring at her sister’s breasts. Tori shrugged.

“A while ago. Already jealous and you just got here.”

“Jealous? Of you?”

“You’ve always wanted whatever I had.” Lainie regretted her original comment and ignored her sister’s tone. Getting off on the wrong foot was not her intention. It was easy, too easy, to slip into old habits.

“I came because you said you needed me,” she said. Tori’s face softened a little.

“I know,” she said.

“Leave your bag by the stairs. I’ll take you up later and show you to your room.” The door shut behind them and the sisters studied each other in the foyer, quickly so as not to be peculiar, but the rapid once-over that twins sometimes do when taking stock of how they might appear to others.

“The police are treating my house as a crime scene,” Tori said. Her voice was low, almost a whisper. The remark was ludicrous. Lainie wondered if it was a sedative talking.

“That’s because that’s what it is,” she finally said. Tori’s eyes flickered. A glare or look of confusion? With Tori, Lainie could never be sure.

“That’s not what I meant,” Tori said.

“I mean they are treating me and my space as though I’ve done something wrong.” Lainie studied her sister’s lips. They also seemed a little fuller than her own. Not that she thought she had particularly thin lips, but her twin apparently thought so. She’d had them plumped with some ghastly filler, a permanent pout that she undoubtedly felt was sexy. Youthful. Pretty.

“It all happened so fast,” she said.

“Of course it did,” Lainie said.

“Did you get a good look at whoever did it?” She paused and looked past her sister. Lainie knew that the tone of her words hadn’t matched what she’d meant to convey. The word whoever had come out slightly accusatory. She didn’t know why it did, but it did.

“You look tired,” Tori said.

“Hungry?” Lainie was, but she knew that her sister didn’t care about that. She’d asked only because it was the right thing to do. The expected thing.

“It was a long ride, ten times longer than necessary,” she said.

“But what about you? Are you feeling all right?”

“My injury is severe, of course, but not so much that I can’t manage.” Tori’s eyes glistened.

“Alex didn’t make it, and that’s the part that hurts so much. And I know that it will for a long time.” The two sisters were suddenly in the moment, the reason why they’d been brought back together. Lainie reached over and patted Tori’s hand. It felt cold, and she gripped it a little. Tori pulsed back. Lainie wanted her to warm up, be better.

“I’m so sorry, Tori,” she said, feeling sorrow for a man she’d never even met.

“Do you need me to call someone? Alex’s family?” Tori, her eyes dust-dry, looked at her sister, searching.

“He has a sister.”

“Parents?” Tori shook her head.

“No. Just a sister.”

“All right, a sister.” Lainie waited for more instructions, a name or a number. Something that would let her know what she was supposed to do. There was a coolness between the pair. Such an interaction wasn’t exactly foreign. At their greeting, there was no full-on embrace. It was more tentative, casual, almost impersonal. On the ride to Tacoma Lainie had let it pass through her mind that her sister would need her. Want her there. After all, she’d called her.

“What’s her name? Where does she live?” Tori’s eyes drilled into Lainie’s.

“I can’t stand her.” Lainie knew that meant that Alex’s sister couldn’t stand Tori.

“Okay. Why is that? Why can’t you stand her?”

“It’s complicated. But, yes, you need to let her know about Alex. Her name is Anne Childers. Husband is a sales manager or something. They live in Portland. One of the suburbs. Beaverton, I think.” Lainie could hardly believe her sister’s disclosure.

“You don’t know?”

“Not any more than I have to. Trust me. Anne is a bitch. But, yes, call her, tomorrow. She is family, after all.” Tori tenderly touched her thigh, indicating that she was in pain and the conversation was over.

“Let’s lock up,” she said, “and I’ll show you to your room so you can freshen up.” They walked across a blue, gold, and cream oriental carpet in the foyer. Tori seemed only a little hesitant in her gait, not in wincing pain as she had when she first appeared in the doorway. Lainie watched her sister tap out a code on the alarm system hidden behind a panel in the foyer.

“Did that go off the other night?” Lainie asked. Tori sighed.

“No, it didn’t. Alex must have forgotten to set it. He was always doing that. It’s amazing that I’ve survived this long.”

“It isn’t like you were suffering, Tori.”

“I’m sure it looks fine from your perspective. Your view of things was always a little cut-and-dried. You know, average.” It was meant to be another sucker punch to her psyche, given by a sister who probably wanted to see if she still had the ability to hurt. Tori never liked to waste time. Lainie shook it off.

“Are you afraid your attacker will come back?”

“Why should I be?” Tori shut the panel.

“You’re here.” The remark was unsettling, though it shouldn’t have been. It probably wouldn’t have been if they were any other pair of sisters. Lainie wondered if Tori was suggesting that since she had arrived, the assailant might become confused and snuff out the wrong twin.

“That’s right, I’m here.” She picked up her carry-on. They slowly walked up the grand staircase and down the Persian-rug-padded hallway to the first bedroom, dominated by an antique canopy bed. Tori pulled back the coverlet and drew the floor-to-ceiling moiré silk drapes, the color of bloodred tulips, like the ones their mother had grown in pots on the back deck of their home in Port Orchard.

“Lainie, I’m so glad that you came.”

“Me, too,” Lainie said, watching her sister disappear into her bedroom just down the hall. Lainie dressed for bed, brushed her teeth. When she discarded a length of floss into wastebasket, a glint of foil caught her eye. It was square with a circular indentation. A condom wrapper. Whoever last stayed in the guest room had a lot more fun than I’m going to have, she thought. Under the covers in the old mahogany bed, Lainie scrolled through her e-mail messages. Her eyes were as tired as they’d ever been. Some messages—too many of them, really—were related to the job she was doing as a content provider for Media, Ink. Her production contact wanted to know if she’d be able to file an extra forty blurbs on Mexican vacation hot spots for a new site the company had recently launched. She fast-forwarded to the end of the message. She hated what her journalism experience had been reduced to. The last message was from Adam Canfield.

Hey Lainie! You know how I feel about your sister, so don’t say hi from me. I know this must be a rough time for her, but I don’t care about her. Hope you’re doing OK!!! Been lots of talk about Tori around here. Anyway, hope your sister is fat now. Call me when you can. Here’s a link to an article about what happened.

She clicked on it. It was from KING-TV, the NBC affiliate in Seattle. It linked to a video that didn’t want to download on her phone’s media player. She scrolled through the article.

“. . . The intruder or intruders circumvented the security system by cutting the wires to the power source. . . .” Lainie wondered why her sister had lied to her about the security system, saying that it had only been switched off. Accidentally. She gleaned one more bit of information from the story. Alex had a son from a previous marriage. The piece didn’t say specifically where the boy lived, but Lainie figured it was with his mother somewhere. She made a mental note to ask about that, too. As she drifted off to sleep, Lainie knew that her sister had a knack for misstating the truth. Lying convincingly had always been one of Tori’s specialties. The truth was Tori had so many gifts. Some good, some evil. Sometimes it was hard to tell exactly which.

Lainie O’Neal got off the phone and sat still on the edge of the bed. She could scarcely believe the conversation she’d had with Anne Connelly Childers, the sister of the brother-in-law she’d never met. It was unbelievable in its content, brevity, and overall awkwardness.

“My brother didn’t trust her, so, that’s what he got. Dead.”

“What are you saying?”

“You know. I know.”

“My sister never would have—”

“Really? That’s interesting. Ask her about the life insurance. If the money goes to her and not his son, then you know what kind of a woman she is.”

“She wasn’t even all that beautiful, if you ask me. I told him that she thought she was God’s gift to men, but I bet she was a plain, if not ugly, little harlot when the makeup came off.” Still playing the conversation in her head, Lainie went downstairs and found Tori in the living room. As she watched her walk to the cherry cabinet that held an elaborate media system, Lainie couldn’t help but think that her sister was using the moment to conjure up something appropriate to say. She put on Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, a plodding piece of piano that seemed to fill the room with more sadness than the moment really required. Tori pulled her robe closer around her voluptuous torso as if the air was cool.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. Something was off, but it was hard to figure. Lainie studied the room. An enormous flatscreen TV over the mantel dominated the space. Antiques that were too good to be reproductions were positioned tastefully. In fact, all of it was tasteful, with the exception of the cottage painting that hung behind them. All of it expensive.

“I talked to your sister-in-law just now.” Lainie feigned interest.

“Really? How was she?”

“She hates you. But that wasn’t the biggest revelation. You’ve made a habit of pissing off people, haven’t you?” Tori said nothing.

“You neglected to tell me that you’re a mother,” Lainie said. Tori looked hard at her sister as she stood clad in another filmy Old Hollywood robe, pink as a flamingo’s feathers. Tori led them to the kitchen, where coffee was brewing into some expensive Italian carafe—not an espresso machine. That would require too much work. Tori liked to sit back and have things happen for her.

“You mean Parker?” She finally answered. Lainie stood across the expansive soapstone island.

“If that’s his name.” Tori pretended not to hear.

“Want something to eat? I’m not a meal person, but I seem to recall you were.”

“I’m fine, Tori.” Lainie knew that was one of Tori’s old tricks, a way to point out that she was two pounds heavier than she. Two freaking pounds! Tori poured them both a cup.

“Look, he’s the stepson from hell and I try to forget about him. Blamed me for everything—the breakup of his parents’ marriage, the fact his father was a workaholic. I don’t know anything and everything. But yes, and Parker has a mother, too. They live in Fircrest.” The town’s name caught Lainie off guard.

“That’s so close by,” she said. Tori shrugged.

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you going to call him? Call his mother?”

“Taken care of, Lainie. I asked the police to handle it.” Lainie let the comment pass without another remark. Her sister had a way of sifting out responsibilities and leaving the hard things behind for others to do.

“Sugar?”

“No. I’m trying to lose some weight,” Lainie said, lying.

“Good idea,” Tori said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Tacoma

The lobby area of the Tacoma Police Department was a mini-museum to all the men and women who donned a uniform to serve and protect the people of Grit City. Kendall sipped a mocha she bought in the Mug Shot Café by the front door and perused the uniform and badge exhibits in the clean, brightly lit space of a big-city station. It was a far cry from the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office.

“Detective Stark?” a man’s voice said. She turned around.

“I’m Eddie Kaminski,” he said. Kaminski was a handsome man, dressed in a gray suit and silver-and-blue tie that would have made Josh Anderson envious.

“I didn’t know I’d be so fascinated by this, but I am,” she said, indicating the history display.

“Lots of great history on these walls. We joke around the office that one day there’ll be pictures of us up here.”

“I’m sure there will,” she said.

“How are things in Kitsap?” he said, motioning for her to follow him to the elevator. He swiped his badge and they got inside for the quick ride to the second floor.

“Nice area. My in-laws, or rather my ex-in-laws, have a place on Beach Drive.”

“As small towns go, pretty good place to live and raise a family.”

“Your hometown? Tori Connelly’s hometown?” he said.

“Right on both counts.” Kendall followed the detective to a spacious conference room that was most notable for an entire wall of photographs of police officers, most in uniform.

“Every commissioned officer and then some,” he said.

“I’m somewhere in the middle, but don’t point me out. That photo was twenty pounds ago and I’m vain enough to admit that I don’t like looking at it.” Kaminski picked up a Mountain Dew he’d been drinking before she arrived.

“Tori Connelly is that well known in South Kitsap?” he asked.

“You could say that, yes. Unforgettable, absolutely. She’s one of those people we know will always pop up. Not often. But always in a big way when they do.”

“You’ve heard we’ve got a person of interest in the shooting, and it isn’t her.” Kendall slid a plastic straw into the cup and drank.

“Right. The neighbor.”

“You have kept up on it,” he said.

“Sure, Detective,” she said.

“Like I said, Tori is kind of a legend in around here. I’m friends with her sister.”

“She’s the stuff of legend? How so?” Kendall sat down.

“She’s never had it easy, and she’s never responded to a situation in a way that was predictable. You probably know that she’s had some family and personal tragedies.”

“Her mom? Her boyfriend in high school?”

“Those, yes. But also her first husband. Died in Hawaii in an accident. She’s had more heartache than just about anyone I’ve ever known.” Kaminski retrieved a notepad and started writing.

“What about that first husband?”

“Accident. I didn’t investigate it, but the Honolulu police were thorough.”

“Right. Thorough,” he said.

“What about the dead kid in high school?”

“Jason Reed was his name. He was seventeen. Tori and her sister Lainie were involved in a car crash. Jason died at the scene.”

“Sounds tragic. But an accident, no?” Kendall shrugged slightly.

“Not sure. It was a long time ago. There are some irregularities and we’re working it.” They talked a little longer and agreed to keep the lines of communication open. He gave her copies of the Connelly autopsy and the police reports as a show of good faith for their promise to work together.

“Keep me in mind,” he said, “if anything shakes loose with the Reed case.”

Jason Reed’s death indicated a potential homicide and Alex Connelly’s was the clearest example of a homicide—a bullet in the head. They were years apart, miles away in time and space, but were connected by a woman named Tori Connelly. Josh Anderson noticed the Tacoma PD documents on Kendall’s desk later that day.

“Anything of interest there?” Kendall shook her head.

“Not really. I don’t know what I was hoping to find. Thought maybe there would be something in the tox screen that would indicate Alex had been drugged.” Josh sat down. He smelled of cigarette smoke, but Kendall didn’t say anything. If he was going to quit smoking, he’d have to do it on his own. She was a mother to Cody, but not to Josh Anderson. That was Mrs. Anderson’s substantial cross to bear.

“You’re thinking that a woman would have poisoned him.”

“Most do. Women rarely use a gun.” Josh flipped through the report.

“You’ve been reading up.”

“Like a crime junkie,” she said.

“Why are you assuming that she’s involved?” She bristled a little at the question.

“I’m not assuming anything. I want to know what happened to Jason more than I want to know what happened in Tacoma. I knew Jason. We all did. He was a good kid. Birdy thinks it is highly likely his hyoid was crushed intentionally, Josh.”

“I get that, but that’s not enough to do anything with. If she’d been charged with the Tacoma case, then you’d have the nexus to make your case that there is something worth piling on some resources. Remember, we are a little light on funding these days.”

“Don’t remind me. I could use a raise.” Josh continued to run through the pages of the printout.

“Tell me about it. My Bimmer is in need of a tune-up, big time, but it’ll cost me seven hundred. I might just go to Grease Monkey and get it done.” Kendall suppressed a smile. Josh had an uncanny knack for bringing his BMW into every conversation.

“So he had the snip,” he said.

“Just wanted the one kid. I did that, too. Sure regretted it. If I’d have had more than one, I’d have better shot of someone giving a shit about me when I’m ready for the rest home.” Kendall leaned forward and reached for the report.

“Hey, I’m still reading that,” he said.

“Sorry. You say he had a vasectomy?”

“Yeah, so?”

“There are plenty of other explanations, of course. But Lainie told Adam that there was a condom wrapper in the guest bedroom at the Connelly place.”

“So?”

“A couple of things, Josh. Think about it. Wouldn’t the Tacoma criminalist collect that?”

“LAPD missed OJ’s glove.”

“Okay. But why would there be a condom wrapper in the house? Alex Connelly had a vasectomy.”

“Maybe he had an STD.”

“Blood’s clean.”

“Maybe she did?” Kendall closed the folder.

“Doubt that,” she said.

“Lainie told Adam that Tori didn’t want to have kids because she didn’t want to ruin her body or something along those lines. Something typical for Tori.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Tacoma

It was after four in the afternoon when Lainie heard the doorbell buzz. She waited for her sister—painful stitches in her thigh or not—to come down the staircase to answer it.

“Tori?” she called from the foyer. No answer. Tori had been holed up in her bedroom all afternoon Skyping, or e-mailing, or surfing the Web. Lainie wasn’t sure. It wasn’t funeral arrangements. No services, as far as Lainie could tell, were in the offing. They planned to go to lunch at the restaurant in the Hotel Murano before Lainie met with her lawyer that afternoon. She hadn’t been charged with a crime, but the rumblings were out there. Earlier that morning, Lainie heard Tori talking on the phone in her bedroom.

“Don’t you get it? What part of this don’t you understand? Is it the combination of ‘do’ and ‘not’?” Lainie hadn’t been sure if the call was to her lawyer or a confidant. It dawned on her as she moved past Tori’s bedroom door that she still knew next to nothing about the dead husband or Tori’s life after she left Port Orchard. Questions were not answered; they were brushed aside like crumbs on a dining table. Lainie saw the figure of a man through the leaded-glass sidelight and turned the knob. It was Eddie Kaminski.

“This spring’s colder than a witch’s—” he said, not finishing the line.

“You know, really cold.” She nodded as the unseasonably cold marine air from Commencement Bay scratched her face and neck.

“You look like you’re feeling better,” he said. Lainie had never seen this man before. This was one of those moments she hadn’t experienced in a very long time. The man on the front porch thought she was Tori.

“I’m Lainie,” she said.

“Tori’s my twin.” Kaminski shook his head.

“You really are a ringer. Gals at the hospital said you were, you know, coming to lend a hand.”

“Are you a friend of hers?” Lainie asked.

“Not exactly.” He pulled out his ID and showed it to her. Lainie’s eyes lingered on it longer than it took for her to read. She was thinking.

“I’m Detective Kaminski. I’m working your brother-in-law’s murder and your sister’s assault.”

“Tori’s upstairs, but she’s not feeling well. She’s tired.” Lainie started to close the door. The detective took a step forward.

“I’m not here to talk to her. I want to talk to you.” Lainie shrugged slightly and the space in the doorway tightened.

“I don’t know anything.” Kaminski ran his eyes along the vertical space that offered a glimpse of the young woman behind the door. She was slender, pretty. She wore dark blue jeans and a rust-colored sweater over a light cream blouse. As she gripped the door, he could see she wore no rings.

“Don’t you want to help your sister? Help her find out who killed her husband?”

“A stranger killed her husband. And of course I—we—want to help.”

“Really. Are you really sure?” Lainie didn’t like the detective’s accusatory tone.

“Please let go of the door now,” she said, pulling the door closed.

“Are you so sure?” She had one more shot.

“She told me so.” The words could not have been emptier, but Lainie found herself in an old, decidedly defensive mode. It was not an unheard-of place for her. In fact, when it came to her sister she’d been there many, many times.

“Ask her if she was having an affair, why don’t you?” Lainie shut the door and turned the deadbolt. She looked up, and Tori was standing at the top of the stairs.

“What did he want?” Tori asked.

“Didn’t you hear him? It seems to me you were always good at eavesdropping.” Tori started down the steps. She wore four-inch heels, a purple dress, and a coil of black pearls around her neck. She’d done her makeup with a heavier hand than a late lunch necessitated. She was beautiful. And she looked worried. Not in pain, as her injury seemed to take a backseat to the heels and the need to look good. Yet, there was no mistaking it. She was troubled.

“All right,” she said.

“You know I’ve never been perfect.”

“Were you cheating on Alex?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean? Not exactly?”

“What happened might be my fault.”

Kendall was making a coffee run at the Kitsap County Administration Building for herself and Josh—because he’d actually done the deed the day before—when Eddie Kaminski called to check in.

“Tori Connelly is a tough nut,” he said.

“All you women in Kitsap are that hard, are you?” Kendall laughed.

“We’re the daughters of lumberjacks, you know. Hang on a sec.” She put a tip in the coffee girl’s tip jar and moved to a table overlooking Sinclair Inlet and the Bremerton shipyard. She set down the cups, wishing she’d wrapped them in paper sleeves. Her fingers stung.

“How’s the case?” she asked.

“Case is fine,” Kaminski said.

“I’m wondering how things are going in Kitsap.” She opened the lid of Josh’s cup and added two packets of sugar.

“Exhumation on the Reed boy is scheduled.”

“Good,” he said.

“I don’t know what we’ll find. But Dr. Waterman says the films indicate an irregularity that could use a relook.”

“Court ordered?”

“Yes, but we didn’t do it without getting permission from the family.”

“Tough and nice.”

“Excuse me?”

“I was just thinking that it was good to ask the family what they thought. You know, you’re tough and nice.”

“Port Orchard women?”

“Yeah, those lumberjacks are good folks.” She smiled.

“I’ll let you know what we—find.”

“You almost said ‘dig up,’ didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“You caught me on that. Tough and nice.”

“What are you reading, Kendall?” Kendall looked over at Steven from her side of the bed. It was late and their bungalow was still. A book called Women Who Kill was propped up on her lap. It was after midnight and he’d fallen to sleep only to be awakened by her bedside lamp.

“How to kill your husband and get away with it. Or something along those lines.” Her tone was deadpan.

“Should I be worried?” he asked, propping his head up with an extra pillow.

“Maybe,” she teased.

“Some of these women that I’ve been reading about went through more men than we go through Splenda around here.”

“That’s a lot,” he said, rolling a little closer to look at the pages of the book. Steven was a handsome man, but never more so than at night when the stubble of dark whiskers peppered his chin. She inched a little closer to him, but continued reading. The book was not a forensic journal, but one of those compendiums of crime that she picked up at the Port Orchard Walgreens. Most cops were loath to admit it, but those kinds of books were a guilty pleasure.

“Who’s that?” Steven indicated a picture of a frumpy, middle-aged woman with horn-rimmed glasses and shoulder-length dark hair.

“Nannie Doss. She confessed to killing eleven people.”

“That’s more husbands than Larry King has had wives.” Kendall laughed.

“Not all husbands with that one. She killed sisters, children, her mother. A real wonderful gal.”

“So you think Tori is a Black Widow, do you?” Kendall looked above her frameless readers.

“I have no idea, really. But two dead husbands, quick disposal of their remains, and a big cash settlement from insurance companies. A nice racket, I guess.”

“Yeah, if you don’t mind bumping off those you supposedly love.”

“That’s just it,” she said.

“These women don’t mind at all.” She went back to her book, reading up about cases of women who did just that. Many did it for money. A more recent case that caught her eye took place in California, where two women in their seventies murdered men living in their boardinghouse. A cop working the case said, “It was like Arsenic and Old Lace, but it doesn’t have Cary Grant.” She read the line to Steven and he laughed.

“Isn’t it great that you have such fun bedtime reading, honey?” His words were said teasingly, but there was a little jab in the mix, too. Kendall had never been able to separate the workday from her home life. She and Steven had gone around and around about it. There was a need to build a wall around her husband and Cody, but it wasn’t so easy. Not when her responsibility was so great.

“How much did those old gals get?”

“Two-point-eight million,” Kendall said. Steven cocked a brow.

“Jesus. That’s big bucks, considering how a gangbanger will kill a guy for a pair of tennis shoes and a five-dollar bill.” Another case, even more recent, involved a woman from upstate New York named Stacey Castor. Castor, forty, was convicted of murdering her husband and the attempted murder of her daughter.

“Nothing like keeping it in the family,” Steven said.

“She used antifreeze.”

“A woman that cold should use it on herself,” he said. Kendall rolled her eyes and nudged him.

“Sorry,” he said, though he wasn’t.

“Couldn’t resist.” Steven reached over and gave her a kiss. That would be the sum of any affection between the two of them that evening. He’d seen his wife like this on more than one occasion. He called it “fact-finding mode,” and once she was immersed, she didn’t come up for air until she knew everything she needed to know. Every once in a while, she’d turn to him and say something about what she was reading.

“Case from Oregon is interesting,” she said.

“Sami Watanabe was convicted of murdering her husband and trying to kill her little boys.”

“Another real sweetheart,” Steven said.

“That’s right. They see everyone as unnecessary. What is necessary is the money they’ll get when their victims are out of the way.”

“So that’s Tori O’Neal?”

“I don’t know, Steven. But look at it, two husbands, a high school classmate, and her own mother. That’s four dead people connected to one person.” Steven pushed the book down so Kendall would focus on him.

“Her mother? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know. It just strikes me as odd that Tori was the last person to see her mother alive.”

“She died of an overdose, right?”

“Technically, yes. I mean, no doubt. But even so, sometimes an overdose is accidental, sometimes on purpose.”

“Jesus, Kendall, you really don’t like Tori, do you?” She ignored his invitation to argue.

“I hate not knowing what happened to all the people who died, all the people who trusted her. Steven, really, one after another?”

“You could say that about other people, Kendall. Misfortune has a way of visiting the same people over and over.” Kendall looked away from her husband and back at the book.

“I agree. It could be just that. I guess I wouldn’t have thought of the first two as potential victims if we hadn’t considered the circumstances of the last two—the moneymakers.”

“Moneymakers,” he said, reaching for the bedside lamp. His half of the bed fell into darkness.

“That’s a cold way to think of anyone.” Kendall knew he was right and she wondered if someone she’d gone to school with could really be that evil.

“We’ll find out,” she said. Kendall turned another page and started to read, but Steven lifted himself up and reached over to turn off her light. It wasn’t a subtle gesture, but he made his point. She wanted to tell him everything that was on her mind since the shooting in Tacoma, but she couldn’t. When she heard his soft snore, she felt relief. Later, she thought. I’ll tell him later.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Kitsap County

While many cemeteries in the Northwest feature water or mountain views for those quiet moments of reflection needed with the passing of a loved one, Fraola Cemetery in Olalla held no such distinction. It was flat as a football field, studded by shade trees and tombstones of the type that cannot be mowed over by an overtaxed volunteer caretaker. Fraola’s name came from the combination of two once-vital towns, Fragaria and Olalla. The Reeds lived in South Kitsap off Stormy Lane. When it came time to inter their son, Jason, they buried him in Fraola in a large plot purchased by Doug Reed’s family. A pink-hued granite monument loomed in the southwest corner of the cemetery; it was the size and style of a marker used for a wealthy family. The Reeds weren’t wealthy at all. Doug worked at the shipyard and Mary at the courthouse. The larger marker was a measure of the importance of their son to their family. When Mary Reed came to observe the exhumation of her son’s grave, it wasn’t to throw a fit, cry, or stomp her feet at the indignity of all of that. She was past that. Kendall had told her that the only way they’d know the truth of what had happened that terrible night would be to reexamine his body.

“He’s already in heaven, Kendall,” Mary said.

“I know that what remains in the casket is only flesh and bone. Not him. Not his spirit.” Kendall could scarcely argue. She’d seen the other side of the reaction at the mere suggestion of an exhumation. A young navy wife from Bremerton had insisted her daughter had stopped breathing, the victim of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, while her husband was on tour in the Northern Pacific. The investigators, the medical authorities, the forensic pathologist, and the coroner all agreed. Baby Natalie was laid to rest at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Bremerton. Two years later, baby Scott died in a similar situation when the father was out at sea. The woman broke down. The detective figured she’d do the same thing if her son Cody had died. That changed, of course, when the judge issued the exhumation order and the discovery was made that both children had died of ethylene glycol poisoning. She’d stirred three tablespoons of Prestone antifreeze into Scott’s and Natalie’s baby bottles. Since a backhoe was too large to get around the Reeds’ mammoth monument, four deputy sheriffs had volunteered for the exhumation. Birdy Waterman had outfitted each with a shovel she purchased at Ace Hardware—the clerk didn’t ask why she needed four.

“You must dig your work,” he said, with an overt wink. She rolled her eyes playfully at the corny joke. Just to be kind to the clerk. But the fact was the pathologist found no pleasure in disturbing a grave. Birdy believed in the sanctity of a burial and the need for people to say good-bye only once. Putting someone through the nightmare of reliving the worst moment of their lives was never taken lightly. The only thing that motivated her was the hope that if anything had been missed by Kitsap’s previous forensic pathologist, she’d be able to see it. She wanted justice to be served, and she knew that sometimes justice was messy and late. Birdy had reviewed the thin report on the Banner Road accident one more time before coming out to Fraola that morning. If she could have come up with a reason to halt the exhumation, she would. She’d rather be embarrassed before, not after. Everything was in order. Bones held up pretty well after fifteen years, and if the embalming was good, the tissue would be relatively preserved. A black plastic curtain cordoned off the area so that any potential onlookers could only see the people working the grave opening from the neck up. After about a half hour of silent digging, one of the deputies moving the sandy soil to a blue tarp spread on the grass hit something solid. He stopped. The sound of scraping metal against a concrete liner was worse than fingernails over a school chalkboard. The coffin was about to be unearthed. After fifteen years in the darkness of a grave, Jason Reed, forever seventeen, was about to be exposed to the bright light of the world. The forensic pathologist looked over at Kendall and Josh as they stood about twenty yards from the exhumation. Behind them by another ten yards was Mary Reed and Jason’s sister.

“Lift it,” Birdy said, softly. Two deputies checked the black plastic curtain to shield the view of the grave. It was time for the curtain to fall.

“It’ll take some real muscle,” one of them said, “but we can get it out of here.” Birdy spoke to the investigators in a quiet and, as always, dignified manner.

“This will take about two hours. I’ll see you in the autopsy suite.”

“This is a waste of time,” Josh said. Kendall nudged him.

“Tell that to Mrs. Reed,” she said.

“She’s here for the truth.” Josh looked over and nodded at the mother and sister standing behind them. He’d hoped that neither had heard what he’d said to Kendall. He hated looking like he didn’t care. Even when he didn’t.

A white halogen bulb pumped so much brightness onto the mummified body laid out on Dr. Waterman’s autopsy table that two of the three observers in the Kitsap County Morgue had no choice but to blink and turn away. Flash! Dead! Boy! The cuts and scrapes from the car accident had turned into dark scratches on an oddly smooth and waxy figure. Jason Reed’s face was in remarkable condition. He looked lifelike, with a trace of stubble protruding from his frozen-in-time adolescent chin. His eyes were shut, of course, but they did not look as if they’d been forced closed. Narrow slits made it look as if he might just wake up. Both investigators stood on the opposite side of the steel and aluminum autopsy table from Dr. Waterman.

“I hope I look that good when I’m dead that long,” Josh said. Kendall looked straight ahead.

“You don’t look that good now.” Birdy ignored Josh, which irritated him. Sometimes it seemed that he said things only to get a rise out of others. It was as if he thought insensitivity was somehow charming. Kendall braced herself, but she couldn’t help but be deeply moved by the sight of the body. He’d been dressed in a Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt and Levi 501s. The last time she’d seen him was at South Kitsap High, on the commons. He was with his circle of friends, jocks mostly. He was a good-looking teenager with curly dark hair that always looked messy and sexy. She closed her eyes a second, imagining him as he was.

“He was a really nice boy,” she said. Dr. Waterman nodded.

“Most who end up here are,” she said.

“At least to somebody.” She gently swabbed the rigid, waxy skin over the dead boy’s hyoid.

“Dirt?” Josh said.

“No, in fact, Jason’s casket had nary a leak. Tightest seal I’ve ever seen. I’m removing makeup that the funeral home had applied with their well-meaning but leaden hand.”

“If you want to look that good, maybe you should use makeup,” Kendall said. Birdy smiled, but didn’t say anything.

“Like your buddy, Adam?” Birdy glanced at Josh.

“You know, you’d be better off not speaking at all, Josh Anderson. Every time you open your mouth, you piss me off. And I don’t like to be pissed off when I’m wielding sharps here.” She turned the beam of light lower to scatter a spray of light over her work area.

“Look,” she said.

“Right there.” Kendall went first.

“Those marks? What are those?” Without touching Jason’s body, she pointed with a gloved finger to a darkened line four inches long and a half inch wide.

“I’ll measure and map them. But my bet is they’re the reason for the broken hyoid.” Josh took his turn.

“I see it. But what of it?”

“Fingertips,” Birdy said.

“Somebody cut off his air supply.”

“Strangled him? Really.”

“Yeah, that would be my guess. Of course, it is hard to say with complete certainty this many years later. If we were looking for poisoning, heavy metals, for example, they’d be here and we’d be able to call this a homicide for sure.” She bent lower to get a better look, completely absorbed in the process of doing her job. It didn’t seem to matter to Dr. Waterman how close she got to the face of the corpse. She sometimes got lost in what she was studying, considering. The spirit was long gone, but the remainder, the vessel, that had held the spirit also told the person’s life story. Jason Reed had a swath of acne above the bridge of his nose that was absent from the photo of the boy handed out at his memorial. No teenager wanted to be remembered for the bad skin that came with a changing body. His senior portrait had been retouched. His blue jeans had a trace of silver paint along the edge of the right-hand pocket. The forensic pathologist wondered if he’d been working on a car, a bike, some other project that had been his passion. She went back to his face, gently probing the stiffened tissue of his lips, drawn tight, thin, like a rubber band pulled to the point of near-breaking. Braces still held his lower teeth in a neat row. Had he dreamed of the day those came off? Is that why he didn’t have a full-on smile in his portrait? “So where does this take us, Birdy?” Kendall asked. Birdy stayed focused on the body.

“What?” Josh spoke up.

“Next step?” She set down the handheld light and looked over at the detectives.

“Back to the witnesses, I’d say. But then again, I’m not a cop. That’s your job.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Kitsap County

Even for an outsider like Tori, the gossip line from Port Orchard was as reliable as any means of communication, in any age. One time Tori dialed her father and pretended to be Lainie to fish for information on what everyone in town was doing. Her dad didn’t catch on. She also called Adam Canfield, and he fell for her ruse. But this wasn’t really gossip that day. She looked at the online edition of Port Orchard’s weekly paper, the Lighthouse.

Body of Local Boy Exhumed

The story reported that the county coroner’s office and sheriff’s detectives led by Kendall Stark were literally digging into Jason Reed’s death and interviewing old witnesses. The case was being reinvestigated because of connection with a more recent case in Tacoma. Jesus! Why not just name me? If Kendall wasn’t a cop, I’d kill her. Lainie entered the kitchen and Tori shut her laptop.

“Coffee?” she asked. Lainie, sleep deprived and feeling it, nodded. Tori poured them each a cup.

“Tori, do you ever have dreams?” It was a simple question, rooted in something deep and foreboding. Lainie wanted more than anything to know if their broken bond was not so broken after all. Tori had called her for help. And while she didn’t trust Tori at all, she wanted to. She looked at her sister and waited for something to come from her lips that would bring them closer together. Maybe not as close as she’d hoped, but a little more was all she wanted. Just a few words. That’s all.

“What kind of dreams?” Tori finally asked as they shared coffee in the immaculate kitchen of the North Junett house. Tori played it carefully. She always did.

“About us. About me.” Tori laughed.

“I’d call that a nightmare, wouldn’t you?”

“Can’t you just try to be nice? You’ve invited me back into your life. I’m here. I’m thinking that you want us to be sisters again. And I wanted you to know that sometimes I dream about you.”

“That’s sweet. You were always the sweet one, Lainie. But no, sorry. I never dream about anything. Not you. Not George Clooney. Not winning the lottery.” Lainie pressed her, gently. To push too hard would get her nowhere.

“Everyone dreams,” she said.

“Maybe so. But I don’t remember any of it.”

“Sometimes I dream of things that I feel are happening to you.”

“Good things, I hope.”

“Not always.”

“Like what?”

“I sometimes dream of Jason and what happened that night on Banner. Sometimes about the night Mom died.”

“Leave it alone, Lainie.”

“I can’t. I don’t know how.”

“Leave it.”

“I want to tell you about my dreams. They scare me. They seem real. More than real.” Tori stood up, wincing in pain.

“I don’t want to hear it. Besides I have real problems now. The media’s going to be coming around. Let’s ignore the house phone and the front door. I just can’t deal with all of this crap.”

Kendall Stark could have found the Connelly address without a GPS, though she had it turned on. She’d been in the neighborhood once before when she and Steven took the Tacoma Historic Homes Tour. This time curiosity, not history, brought her there. It figures that Tori would end up in a place like this, she thought, as she pulled in front of the Victorian on North Junett. She always wanted more than anyone dared to dream. Kendall parked her car and looked over at Darius Fulton’s place, which seemed deserted. She told herself she would talk to him only if he was outside. She knew that inserting herself in any kind of investigation going on with Tacoma PD was a major breach. Her only way around it was that she and the victim’s twin sister were friends. Lainie was staying there. Seeing her on a personal basis was probably something that others would accept. As she stepped out of her vehicle, a woman across the street got out of her car and walked over. She was a small woman, but she was walking big, purposeful steps.

“Are you the sister?” Kendall shook her head.

“No. I’m a friend. Are you here to see Tori?”

“We’ll, no one’s home. I’m Laura Connelly. Alex was my husband. Rather, he was my husband before he divorced me to be with her.” Her. The word was uttered with complete disdain. Kendall smiled slightly. She didn’t care much for Tori, either. Laura swept back her strawberry blond bangs and looked over at the house. Kendall kept her eyes fixed on Laura.

“I wanted to talk to Tori. I don’t appreciate what she’s done since the shooting.”

“What do you mean?”

“She isn’t even doing a memorial service. I talked to her on the phone. She says she’s too upset. But you know what, she sure didn’t sound upset. She sounded more like she just didn’t want to deal with it.” Kendall could see the woman was barely hanging on, caught up in the emotions that come with loss and anger.

“I’m friends with her twin sister. Lainie told me about the service, or rather the lack of one right now. I’m sure that Tori will come around and do the right thing once she’s feeling better.”

“You don’t know her very well. I mean, you might know her twin, but I can assure you that Tori never does the right thing. She wouldn’t know the right thing if it bit her on that lipo-sucked butt of hers.”

“You’re angry,” Kendall said softly.

“I’m sorry. I’m sure this is hard for you, too.” In that very instant, the fuse that had been burning ignited and Laura started to cry. She turned away, embarrassed.

“I’m sorry. I’m more worried for my son. He’s a special boy and he’s torn up over this. I just know that losing his dad is another blow. I honestly don’t know what to do. I’m pretty sure that Tori had something to do with Alex’s death. I don’t know how my son will deal with this . . . he’s only seventeen.” There was a lot wrapped up in Laura’s words, but there was only one part she could address right away.

“The police will take care of it.”

“How do you know? They don’t seem to care. They just go through the motions.” Laura wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hands.

“I’m a police officer,” Kendall said.

“And believe me, I care. I care about the victim here and those who are collateral damage to a violent crime.”

“Like my son.”

“And like you,” Kendall said. Laura nodded.

“I appreciate that. Thank you. I’m glad that you’re working on this case. Makes me feel better.”

“I’m not working this. I’m an investigator with the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. This isn’t our case, but I do care. I’m sure that Tacoma Police will do an excellent job.” Kendall held out a business card.

“You can call me if you want to talk. I’m a mother, too. I know how hard this can be on your son.” Laura accepted the card.

“Thanks, I know it might seem silly that I care so much. I know I’m not his wife anymore, and it really isn’t that anyway. It’s my son. He needed his dad.”

“It isn’t silly at all,” Kendall said.

“I know you are grieving, too.”

The year before her husband died, Tori Connelly smiled. It was a big, white, sexy grin. Tori liked what she was hearing. She loved it when her ideas were embraced. Indeed, she thrived on it. In fact, the whole world spun in the right direction when others understood her place in the universe. She was the center of it all. Always had been. She knew that the greatest power came when a person took her idea and held it as his or her own.

“We’ll need a patsy,” he said. She looked at him with that smile on her face.

“What have you been doing, reading up on Chicago gangsters?” He snuggled next to her and laughed.

“You know what I mean.” She kissed him.

“Yes,” she said, “I do. Someone we can pin this on.” He nodded.

“To buy us the time we need.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Kitsap County

Amy’s by the Bay was in fact owned by a woman named Amy, but it did not have a view of the bay. It did, however, look out across Sinclair Inlet toward the Bremerton shipyard with its mile-long row of navy vessels waiting for their turn to be decommissioned and disassembled for scrap. From their table, the reunion committee could see the ships looking like a string of beached gray whales.

“Stunning view,” Adam Canfield said, his snarky tone in full swing.

“Port Orchard’s true best-kept secret is that it is a waterfront town that looks out at a bunch of rusty ships.”

“That’s the sight of freedom,” Penny said, pointing to an aircraft carrier.

“They’re still ugly.”

“Don’t they come in any other color? Taupe?” Adam smiled. He had that know-it-all Penny right where he wanted her.

“Taupe, Penny? Really, Penny? That’s so two decades ago.” The waitress came and Penny used the intrusion to ignore Adam. Kendall ordered fish and chips and a slice of cheesecake to go. She’d bring it to Cody for dessert that evening. He was back on a strawberry kick. That meant that sandwiches had to have strawberry jam, milk was flavored with Strawberry Quik, and Kendall had to wear a pink coat when they went out together.

“So, Kendall,” Adam began, “what’s going on with the O’Neal case?”

“I can’t really say,” she said.

“You know that.”

“What? Is this some law enforcement code of silence or something?” Penny said, stabbing a shrimp on her salad with a fork like she was on the hunt. Kendall shook her head.

“No, not really. I mean, I really can’t talk about it.”

“Well, I can,” Adam said.

“I talked with Lainie last night. You know when I was checking to see if she’s coming to this meeting.”

“I take it she’s not coming,” Penny said, looking around the table.

“You should be a detective, Penny.” Adam poured a packet of artificial sweetener into his iced tea.

“Actually, she told me a few little tidbits that I can pass along.” Kendall was interested in what Adam was about to say but did not egg him on. Adam never really had to be egged on anyway.

“She thinks her sister had a lover.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Tori was such a slut,” Penny said. Kendall glared at Penny, then focused back on Adam.

“What did she say about that?” she asked.

“She didn’t say anything. She found a condom wrapper in the bedroom.” Penny chomped down on the last of her shrimp, wrinkling her nose a little. As the owner of her own quasi-restaurant, she had to show her disdain for the competition.

“Kind of skimpy here on the shrimp,” she said.

“Aren’t you still trying to slim down before the reunion?” Adam asked. Penny ignored the remark.

“I know this isn’t good food conversation,” Adam said.

“But what’s up with digging up Jason Reed? That’s so gross.” Kendall set down her fork.

“You’re right, Adam, that isn’t good food conversation.”

“I saw it in the paper, too,” Penny said. Adam motioned for some more sweetener.

“I’m glad Lainie wasn’t around when you dug him up. They were pretty serious.” Kendall shook her head.

“No, you got the wrong twin. Tori was dating Jason. And they were not serious. Not at all.” Adam poured the white powder into his drink and stirred.

“I could never get those two girls straight. Who could?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Port Orchard

Josh Anderson stood awkwardly outside the women’s restroom at the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. A young deputy walked by and gave him a strange look, but Josh shrugged it off. The minute the door cracked open and a records clerk exited, he poked his head inside.

“Kendall, you in there?” A voice came from one of the stalls.

“Yes, Josh, do you mind?” He took a step inside, hoping that Kendall was the only woman in there.

“We got to go,” he said.

“I’m trying to go now,” she said.

“Seriously, Kendall. Mike Walsh has been killed. Church secretary just called it into Cen Com.”

“Our Mike Walsh?”

“Yeah, the Reed accident witness.” Kendall flushed.

“Coming now,” she said.

From the street it appeared as if the Lord’s Grace Community Church was nothing more than a relic of an old business, an enormous, rusted tin can stuck in the sandy loam of the peninsula. But not so. Outside appearances were so deceiving. The Lord’s Grace Church was paneled inside with quarter-sawn old-growth fir that had been salvaged from somewhere. The interior of the building glowed pink, like the interior of an enormous scallop shell. But that day none of that mattered because tragedy had visited there in a very big, bloody way. The church had not seen such commotion and traffic since the funeral for a firefighter who’d been killed in the line of duty the previous summer. An ambulance, a trio of the black-and-white Kitsap County Chevy Blazers, and a horde of onlookers crowded the parking lot. Forensics had already begun processing the scene when the Kitsap County detectives arrived in Josh’s blue BMW, one of the rare times when he offered to drive. Josh parked behind the church, and the detectives followed the painted plywood sign that indicated the location of the office.

“This place is a dump. Gives me another reason to be glad I don’t go to church,” Josh said. Kendall looked at him before returning her gaze to the celestial Quonset hut. On the edge of the walkway, a box marked FREE was filled with canned goods.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Church might be a good thing. Surely a needed thing.”

“You believe in all that shit?”

“I do. I thank God every day for the gifts he’s given me—Steven and Cody.” Josh looked uncomfortable.

“I guess so. Not sure what God has to do with any of it. And considering that the pastor was murdered, I’d say God didn’t do much for him, either.” Kendall wasn’t a regular churchgoer, but challenges in her life had brought her to the place where she folded her hands and asked for guidance. She didn’t say so right then, but one of the people she prayed for was Josh Anderson. She also prayed about things that she’d done in the past, and for forgiveness for any mistakes she’d make in the future. Mostly it was about the past.

“Nice ride,” one of the uniformed officers said, indicating the BMW.

“It gets me here and there,” Josh said, as the officer held up the plastic yellow crime-scene barrier for the detectives to pass under. Kendall didn’t say a word. Josh Anderson’s life had been reduced to one bright spot—a car. She made it a point to let him bask in any attention that came his way. In the office, at a latte stand, or even at a crime scene. Josh had been down so low that a little boost was probably a good thing. Not too much. But a little was good. A woman in a khaki jacket stood over by the door. Her face was red, and it was obvious that she’d been crying. A lot.

“Secretary Susan Piccolo,” the officer said.

“She found him. He’s been dead a while.” Just inside the doorway to the church, a tall African American officer whom Kendall had met at a fund-raiser for a crime victims’ group greeted her with a smile and a nod.

“Fishing knife,” Charlie Turner said, “recovered in the pastor’s office.” He motioned for Kendall and Josh to follow him inside. Yellow cards had been taped to the fir floor in the pattern that suggested the obvious—footprints.

“Left tracks,” Josh said. Charlie nodded.

“Yeah. The scene is pretty clean except for five small imprints left by the toe of a tennis shoe. Tech says Nike. Lab will confirm, of course.” The body had been dead long enough to emit the gasses and stench that comes with death, but not long enough for blowflies to lay their eggs.

“Cause of death is pretty obvious,” Josh said kneeling next to the body. Kendall crouched closer, pointing to the gaping wounds cut through the fabric of what had been a plain white shirt. It was now dark brown and red. Blood had coagulated in a kidney shape, like an old Hollywood swimming pool, on the floor next to the body.

“He was sliced pretty bad, wasn’t he?” she asked. Josh nodded.

“Overkill.” Kendall used her silver Cross pen to point.

“Bound at the wrists with tape.”

“Red tape,” Josh said.

“Wonder if the poor SOB was tortured. Maybe this is one of those cases in which the abused choirboy comes back with a blade and a plan for payback.” Kendall stood and scanned the scene. Everything was serene, the lilies, the prayer books, the banner of doves and olive branches to the side of the altar.

“Let’s get everything photographed and mapped and get him down to Birdy’s table.”

Men know it because they were once teenage boys. They know that the power of desire and lust is a steel cable that runs from their penis to the body of a pretty girl. Sometimes any girl. If the real thing is not a possibility, the image of a woman in the foldout of a spank magazine is a surefire catalyst for sexually charged fantasy. Teenage boys are embarrassed by the stiffness that comes from the thoughts in their heads. Yet it cannot be helped. Teenage boys think of sex twenty times a minute. No adolescent male can stop himself from standing at attention. Most teenage girls, average ones anyway, don’t understand their true power until their youth has faded and they no longer can command the eye of a horny male. But a beautiful woman always remembers how it’s done. How a look, a movement, a voice can excite a male. How she can cause something small to grow in size. Smart beautiful woman never forget. Smart, beautiful, and cunning women, like Tori Connelly, know how to use it. Sex is joy. Sex is a weapon. Sometimes sex is an ecstasy-filled prison camp. Tori sprayed on some Attraction by Lancôme perfume, checked her hair and makeup in the rearview mirror of her Lexus, and went into the Tacoma Police Department. If heads turned when she passed by, that was fine. She was used to people studying her with both adulation and disdain. Look all you want; you can hate me. You can want to fuck me. But you’ll never touch me unless I say so. Kaminski met her in the lobby.

“Detective,” she said, “I hope you don’t mind the intrusion.”

“Mrs. Connelly.”

“Tori. That’s what people who know me call me.”

“Mrs. Connelly.”

“Don’t be so cold, so professional,” she said.

“I know you can be friendly when you want to be.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m not sure. I’m here to clear the air a little.” She looked over at the bench in front of the display of an old paddy wagon.

“Can we sit? My leg still stings a little.” The detective nodded. They sat, and she scissored her legs. They were long, lean, and bare. Her calves were among her best features, and she rotated her heel slightly to make sure he got a look. Leg man? Kaminski moved his eyes back to Tori’s face, catching a look that indicated she’d tracked his gaze.

“I’ve been hearing things from Port Orchard that you’re still investigating me, which is odd because I’ve heard you’re about to arrest my stalker for the murder of my husband.”

“Just doing some background,” he said.

“Fine. So I’m here to answer your questions about my past. And yes, I have one. And even though my so-called criminal past occurred when I was a juvenile and was expunged upon my release, I’ll tell you about it. I also previously lost a husband in a tragic accident.”

“That makes three deaths?”

“Tic-tac-toe, detective. So what?”

“You feel good about that? About the coincidence of it all?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Two of those deaths made me rich. One made me the woman I am today.” Kaminski chugged his tepid Mountain Dew.

“Detective Stark thinks you might be a black widow.” Tori shrugged as though the remark was nothing.

“She has an overactive imagination. Comes from being a nerd in high school and fantasizing about being a detective.”

“Oh, really? You seem to like her a lot.” She shifted on the bench.

“I honestly came here to check in on the investigation. You know, to make sure everything is just fine.”

“We’re good,” he said, noticing a beat cop coming their way.

“Thanks for coming by.” The young officer from the crime scene happened by with some paperwork, but his eyes stayed on the beautiful blonde. Tori got up to leave. She looked Robert Caswell up and down.

“The uniform suits you,” she said.

“If you say so,” he said, accepting the compliment. She smiled as she walked away toward the door on a cloud of perfume.

“She’s hot,” Robert said.

“You can put your hard-on away,” Kaminski said. But yeah, falling for her is slipping into a danger zone, for sure, he thought. Kaminski noticed Kendall Stark’s number pop up on his phone as he walked toward the elevator, but he ignored her. Not even your case, detective, he thought. This one belongs to me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Port Orchard

Fifteen years ago

There were lots of bland names for the place. Euphemisms, really. Kitsap County authorities and those who worked there liked to call it a Secure Crisis Residential Center, or S-CRC. It sounded so civilized, so ordered. The facility off Old Clifton Road, tucked behind a curtain of evergreens, was institutionally bland in every way. Except for the goings-on inside—and the reasons why anyone had been sent there. Eight units called pods made up the living quarters for the 100-bed juvenile justice facility. Despite the best efforts of the custodial staff, each pod was vile, smelly, ripe with the odors that come with boys who refused to shower, girls who won’t change their clothes. Defiant teens times ten. S-CRC, not hardly. The inmates who did time there thought of it as juvy, or jail. The place hadn’t been remodeled for twenty years and it needed it. When government funds finally came through in the late 1990s, it was decided that floor-to-ceiling renovations were in order. New furniture, too. The place was closed and “students” (times had changed and the teens incarcerated there were no longer called “inmates”) were sent to facilities in Belfair and Bremerton. A pair of day laborers who’d started carrying the bed frames out of 7-pod (“Unlucky 7”) were the first to notice the messages.

“Check it out,” one man said to the other. The other bent down and started reading.

“Shit. We’re talking screwed-up kids, for sure.”

“Yeah. Big-time. Wonder what became of this twisted little puke?”

Under the widely spaced wire mesh of the bed frame was a smooth, almost melamine-like surface. The writer was not the first to scratch out words of rage there. Others had done so, too, using everything from a jagged shard of glass to the bloody tip of a fingernail.

I want to kill my family.

Deb is a whore.

My mom cheats on my dad.

Officer Hector is the devil.

All of those things might have been true. The writer, who was adding to the litany of wrath made by others who had lain there to look up at the backside of the upper bunk bed, took out an X-ACTO blade that was contraband of the highest order. Worse than drugs probably, but stupidly available in an art resource classroom down the hall. Scratch. Carve. Scratch. Particles rained down into the eyes. But the angry scribe kept scratching out a message that would be seen by only a few. Only those who’d suffered. Those were the ones who might understand. Tears, designed to give the eyes relief from the irritants that spiraled downward, only blurred the action at hand. A hard blink and then more scratching.

No one will ever do this to me again.

It was only three letters.

D-I-E.

Satisfied, the writer slipped the blade into the space between the mattress and the bed frame. It would always be there at the ready. Just in case.

The ladies of the Port Orchard Kiwanis Club donated a kit for a three-foot-tall Victorian dollhouse as a project for the teens incarcerated in juvenile detention. The concept was simple and, detractors thought, naive. Give the troubled kids something to do that was constructive in every sense of the word and just maybe they’d see that creating something for a greater cause would lead to improved self-esteem and compassion for others. The world was not always about them, drugs, hot cars, and the erratic behavior that put them behind bars in the first place. The kit for the dollhouse was prepackaged and labeled by the manufacturer. It was foolproof. The model selected by the women’s group was called “Summer Time” and featured a turret, widow’s walk, and windows that actually opened—though they were made of clear Plexiglas.

“Real glass poses a real danger,” said the administrator responsible for recreational programming at the detention center, when first approached with the idea. The woman who had been going over what would be in the kit appeared confused.

“Nothing that can be used as a weapon can be brought into the rec center.”

“I see.”

“No nails,” he went on.

“No sharp corners. Nothing at all.”

“The shingles are fish scale, so they’re rounded,” the woman said as if the design had been in sync with the agency’s concerns.

“No toxic glue. Elmer’s only. No soldering. Burns, you know.” Six weeks after she dropped off the kit, the woman returned to pick up the finished dollhouse. She planned to auction it off that weekend, with the money raised to support a food drive. The house was a marvel. Better than she thought it could be. It was painted white and blue, with a burgundy trim around the turret. With the help of a custodian, she loaded it into the back of her minivan.

“The kids did a nice job on it,” she said. The custodian agreed.

“Yeah. The girls did all the work. Guys wouldn’t touch it.” As she drove away, the woman noticed an acrid smell. She cracked the window of the van. That paint sure stinks, she thought. The next morning she noticed that the rusty trim had darkened to almost a black.

“That’s odd,” she thought. She didn’t know what the stain had been, nor did she see the message scrawled under the front porch.

I KNOW WHO KILLED JASON REED.

No one would ever see it. No one would know that the red stain had not been wood stain at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Tacoma

The Hotel Murano was a hipsters’ hangout, upscale and oh-so-cool in a city decidedly short on both qualities. Scattered throughout the chic design of the hotel and restaurant was glass artwork, the equal of which could be found in some museums. In the lobby, a life-size glass sculpture of a woman’s dress and torso looked as though it had been carved from ice. Lainie eyed it, thinking the size and look might work for Tori. Cold as Tori. The pair went up the staircase to the fourth floor to Bite, where they were seated in a semicircular orange-colored booth with a peekaboo view of the Thea Foss Waterway. A waiter in a light blue shirt and dark slacks flitted from one table to the next. Flitting wasn’t easy at his age, to be sure. He was old enough to be a grandfather. He reminded Lainie of a waiter at Seattle’s venerable Canlis restaurant, which she’d profiled for the P-I the month before the paper went under. He’d had that job for forty-five years with no sign of letting up. She’d felt wistful about the man, as if working at the same place for so many years should almost be envied. I’ll bet he still has his job, she thought. As the sisters took their menus, the eyes of a few patrons latched onto them. Some might have wondered if they were sisters who merely looked similar; a few might have allowed themselves to wonder if they in fact were twins. Tori was brighter, shinier, and undeniably more alluring than her sister. It was more than her tight, stylish clothes or her shimmering blond tresses. There was something about her that transcended all the parts that created that stunning image. She had an aura of sensuality that men could not resist and women—those who chose to be honest with themselves—were envious of to such a degree that they instantly reviled her.

“Gold digger.”

“White trash.”

“Harlot.”

“Slut.” All of those words had been hurled at Tori. She’d deflected them with Teflon-coated talons. A quick flick and away they went. A new nickname was in the offing and Tori Connelly seemed to know it would take some doing to deflect that.

“Black Widow.” The Tacoma News Tribune advanced the story of the Junett shooting that day with a photo of Tori and information about her first husband’s death.

DEATH TOOK A HOLIDAY

Connelly’s First Husband

Killed in Hawaii

Despite her newfound notoriety, she was still in Tori mode. The waiter brought San Pellegrino with lime slices with dingy edges and she told him to take them back.

“You wouldn’t want that served to you. Why bring that to me and my sister?” He nodded and left the table in a blue blur.

“I hope he remembers which glass to spit into,” Lainie said. They were there to talk about what happened the night of the shooting, but Lainie had another topic on her mind. Her sister hadn’t once mentioned their father. It infuriated her.

“Aren’t you going to ask about Dad?” Tori set aside her water and poured some wine from a decanter that probably cost a week’s salary—if, that is, she still had a salary, Lainie thought.

“How is he?” Lainie looked sharply at her sister.

“Like you care.” Tori let out a breath and shook her head.

“I stayed away because I care.” The response was maddening because, as far as Lainie could see, her sister didn’t care. Couldn’t, really. It was beyond what she was able to feel.

“Don’t give me that, Tori. Remember, you and I have the same DNA. I know what makes you tick, how you feel, what you are going to wear when you go to your closet.” Tori shifted in the booth, buying time to think. Lainie couldn’t be sure.

“I’ve always loved that about you, Lainie. You were always so goddamn smug about what you thought you knew about me.” Lainie took a sip, twirling the wine in her near-empty glass.

“Don’t go there. I’m here because you needed me.”

“Right. And I do. And you, my other half, owe me.” Lainie looked at her and said nothing. Her face was devoid of emotion. Tori knew how to feed off others in a way that seemed both remarkable and scary. She could tap into a weakness and drill out whatever advanced her cause.

“You know you do. You’re my blood.” Tori sipped her wine.

“We’re probably closer than blood.” There was truth to that, but Lainie didn’t want to acknowledge it. The relationship was complicated and it was better to change the subject.

“Did you shoot him, then yourself?” Tori sighed.

“I knew you’d think that,” she said.

“Well?”

“Are you my lawyer or my sister?”

“Being your lawyer would be a choice. No, I’m your sister.” Tori looked directly into her sister’s eyes.

“No, I didn’t shoot him.” Lainie finished her wine, and the salads arrived. She would not have another drink. She never wanted to give Tori the upper hand.

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know.” She looked back down at her glass.

“Pour you another?” Lainie ignored her offer.

“You seem to be hiding something, Tori.” Tori studied her sister; this time her eyes glistened with tears. Oh, yes, Lainie thought. I’ve seen those tears before. They come whenever she needs to get her way.

“I’m in trouble. I’m afraid,” Tori said, speaking in a plaintive manner that didn’t seem like the sister who’d been out of sight but not completely out of mind.

“What happened, Tori?” No response. Just more thinking, buying time, scanning for the right words.

“What happened?” Again, Lainie restrained herself from ending the question with the words “this time.” Tori told her about the night of the shooting, how she hadn’t really seen all that much. How quickly everything happened. She mentioned that one of the detectives had been rude to her, almost suggesting that she wasn’t being truthful.

“I really don’t know how much more forthcoming I could be,” she said.

“I was a victim here, too. I was shot. If I didn’t get out of there, I probably would have been raped, then murdered.” The old but speedy waiter awkwardly took their order. Lainie selected grilled tofu with a miso vinaigrette, peanut noodles, and curry coconut butternut squash. Tori ordered a pan-roasted organic chicken breast with kalamata and green olives.

“Don’t tell me you’re a vegan now,” Tori said.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Tori smiled.

“It would be so like you not to eat meat.” Lainie changed the subject. She motioned to Tori’s leg.

“How many stitches? “Three or four. I’ll never be able wear a bikini again.” At thirty-three, Lainie doubted she’d ever wear a bikini, and it had nothing to do with a scar.

“What do you want from me, Tori? I mean, really, you call me up out of the blue. You walked out on Dad and me. You didn’t even come when he was so sick. He almost died! Where in the hell were you?” Tori stared into Lainie’s eyes.

“I have issues with the past. You of all people should know it.” If they were playing a game of chicken, neither was going to blink.

“You can’t use that forever, you know that, right?” Tori held her sister frozen in her stare.

“Who says? You?”

“Let’s move on,” Lainie said, realizing she had blinked.

“Your husband is dead. You’ve been shot.”

“Yes and yes.”

“I don’t know anything about him. About Alex, your husband, whose name you seldom use. Honestly, I don’t know anything about you.” When the words left her lips, Lainie O’Neal knew that she could not have been more accurate in her description of the state of affairs between the twins.

“Fair enough. But I don’t expect you’ll like much of what I have to say,” Tori said, showing no emotion. Her eyes could be filled with charm and sparkle one moment and completely dead the next. She could play the center of attention or the woman no one wants to make eye contact with for fear of a cruel remark.

“You’ve always been such a bitch, Tori. Glad to see that hasn’t changed.” Tori smiled.

“Remember,” she said, “I’m the bad one.” Lainie didn’t take the bait.

“That brings me to the next question. Were you having an affair? The detective thinks so.”

“It wasn’t an affair. It was a mistake. A big one. And I think that’s the reason all of this happened.”

“Who was it? Did your husband know?” Tori lowered her head and put her palms against her forehead, gently. Not so much that she’d muss her hair or smear her makeup. She rolled her forehead against her hands, as if coaxing the memories.

“My neighbor, Darius,” she said, looking up.

“I was lonely and stupidly got involved with him. Alex was always working and I was in that big old house all alone. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I really didn’t. I was ... just so alone.” Cue the violins, Lainie thought. She’d heard her sister’s attempt at contrition plenty of times before. In fact, a cascade of memories poured over her as they sat.

“What happened?”

“He just wouldn’t take no for an answer, Lainie. I swear it. He kept coming over. He told me he loved me and that he couldn’t live without me. Then he told me that he’d do anything to be with me again. I told him no. I told him that the sex was a mistake.”

“When was this?” she asked, thinking of the condom wrapper.

“It has been over for a while. At least as far as I was concerned.” Lainie didn’t believe her, but she didn’t want to confront her about what she’d found.

“Did he shoot you? Did he kill Alex?” Tori shook her head.

“I wish I could say he did. But honestly, I didn’t see the face of who did it. It happened so fast. I heard the gunfire. I ran into the room, bent over Alex . . . a man in a black mask shot me. . . .” She started to cry. At least, tears rolled down her cheeks, and if it was any other person it would have been genuine tears. With Tori, Lainie wasn’t so sure.

“You didn’t see him well enough to identify him?” she asked.

“No. I ran over to Darius’s house to confront him. I thought it could be him . . . I stood there bleeding and I told him that I would kill him myself. I don’t know if it was him. He didn’t seem to be out of breath or blood soaked or anything. I passed out, and he called nine-one-one.” Lainie leaned forward to make sure her sister got the point.

“You need to tell the police.” Tori looked away, then back at her sister.

“I’ve tried, but considering my history, I’m not sure anyone would believe me.” Lainie knew what she was talking about. There was the matter of that other dead husband of hers. Their food arrived and Tori brightened.

“God, I’m so hungry!” She pierced her chicken with her fork.

“I feel like I haven’t eaten in weeks!” Lainie nodded. She wanted to say something about how it was so nice that her sister had gotten back her appetite.

“You know, since your husband has barely been dead a few days.” But she didn’t. She didn’t dare.

Tori Connelly didn’t look like the kind of woman who would need to use a twenty-four-hour Kinko’s copy machine or computer, but she was. She made her way into the copier center off South Nineteenth Street. She carried with her a notebook and a purse. She needed neither. She had no intention of using cash or a credit card, and she certainly didn’t need to refer to any notes. She pretended to peruse the stationery section and paper samples while she waited for a caffeine-buzzed student to leave his rented PC for the bathroom. It took her about a minute to pull up a phony Hotmail account. Stupid idiot, don’t you know about computing security? She typed in an e-mail address and tapped out a message that included a bank account number in the Bahamas. It was typed in reverse order as she’d been advised to do. The subject line was: You Better Not Screw This Up.

“Hey, I was working there.” The voice belonged to the student-idiot. She looked up at him and smiled.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I thought you were gone for the night.”

“You can see I’m not. I left all my stuff here while I went to take a leak. Do you mind?” He glared at her and waited for her to give up. He looked down at the screen to read what she was doing, but she’d minimized the screen. She pushed the send button and closed the window.

“Sorry. No harm. No foul.”

She couldn’t blame it on the food at Bite that evening. But once more Lainie couldn’t sleep. Her eyelids popped up like pulled window shades with broken springs. Lainie O’Neal shifted under the covers and lamented how the drama of the past days had beaten her back to the familiar point of exhaustion and sleeplessness. She still had not renewed her sleeping pill prescription, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. Her doctor had said that her inability to sleep might be rooted in some unchecked psychological problem. It wasn’t the first time that she’d heard that.

“A pill will only mask the problem, Lainie. You need to address what is eating at you day and night,” he said. She would change doctors again. In the meantime, she knew the pattern of the past few nights would play out again. Sleep would come after 3 A.M. and so would the nightmares. By 4 A.M. she’d be awake, shivering, and alone to try to come to terms with what she’d seen in her dreams, dreams that always included her sister. Finally, darkness and slumber came. She followed the sound of angry voices down the hallway of the house in Port Orchard. She was in a pale pink nightgown, following the sound into her parents’ room. She stood there in front of her mother, her fists balled up and tears streaming down her face. As she took it all in, her mind floated to the ceiling where she looked down at the scene playing underneath her. A curtain fluttered. Her blond head from above. Her mother in the bed looking at her, her head propped up on a satin pillow.

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“You looked at me like I did. That’s enough.”

“A look isn’t the same as an accusation, Tori.”

“I know what you’re thinking, Mom.”

“No, you don’t. I told you what I thought, and you seem to think that I’ve said something otherwise.”

“I hate you. I hate her. I hate him.”

“Hate is an ugly word.”

“You are ugly. You are stupid. You are boring.” The insults were the trifecta of teenager insults at anyone, especially mothers.

“I’m not having this conversation. If you can’t be nice now, come back when you can. We’re done here. Leave.”

“I wish you were dead.” Their mother closed her eyes and exhaled a sigh.

“I will be someday. I might even be dead now.” The scene stalled, and then crackled like an old 1960s TV clip as the imagery went from color to black-and-white. Lainie watched from above, her back pressed against the popcorn ceiling. A male’s voice interrupted the single moment of quiet.

“What’s going on here?” It was the familiar voice of their father.

“Nothing. She’s being mean.”

“I’m being truthful and she knows it.” As the images faded and she began to wake, her body drenched in sweat, Lainie could not be sure who had said what. She got up and sat on the edge of the bed. She looked down at her hands, still balled up in a rage for which she had no control. Slowly and deliberately she unfurled her fingers. There was nothing inside but lozenge- and circular-shaped indentations. Lainie wondered if she was awake or asleep. If she’d seen herself or her sister. More than anything, she wondered if there was a message coming from Tori at that very moment as she slept and dreamed in the bedroom down the hall.

“Tori,” she said aloud, “what is this all about? Tell me. What did you do?”

Tori sat straight up in the big Rice bed. The clock was ticking toward a deadline that mattered. Not like the seemingly arbitrary IRS deadline of April 15, or the kind of line in the sand that someone adheres to when they insist something has to be done by a certain time. This deadline wasn’t like that at all. In fact, some might see it as a time of celebration. A rite of passage. It was only a few days until Saturday. Once the clock struck midnight, everything would be exactly as she’d wanted. As they dreamed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Port Orchard

Kendall looked over reports from the night of the shooting in Tacoma and the preliminary report Birdy Waterman had completed on the stabbing of homicide victim Mikey Walsh in Kingston. They were not related by methods of homicide, by geography or socioeconomic status. Yet Kendall didn’t believe in the concept of coincidences. Certainly there was a random order to the universe, but when it came to evil there often was a connection. Evil is rare and not that random. In instances in which a crime had been staged by a perpetrator, items were often scattered willy-nilly. In fact, overscattered . If Tori Connelly had fabricated the events of the evening, she’d exercised considerable restraint in her coverup. That very little in the house was disturbed bolstered her contention that an intruder had entered the residence and panicked after coming across Alex watching TV. Any killer who makes the mistake of doing the deed in their own home usually stages every aspect of the crime to ensure that even the greenest detective or crime-scene investigator sees each clue as it is hurtled at them. Drawers pulled out. Coffee table overturned. Jewelry littering the floor like bread crumbs to the front door. All of those things were right out of the mostly caught killer’s playbook of greatest mistakes. Yet very little of that, aside from a single pulled-out drawer and an overturned potted fern, had been found at the scene of the Connelly murder. Alex Connelly was killed execution-style. But if so . . . who? And why? Mikey Walsh had been on the scene of a fatal traffic accident fifteen years ago. Within days of the body of the victim being exhumed, he’s stabbed to death. Susan Piccolo, the church secretary, indicated that some money was missing. But was that merely staging, too? Liver temperature put Mikey’s death on Monday. The report also noted that he’d been stabbed five times, though Birdy considered two of the wounds as “tentative” in nature. Afraid? Weak? Uncertain? Josh appeared in the hallway and Kendall called out to him.

“I think the cases are related,” she said.

“Of course you do,” he answered.

“You like that sort of thing.” Just when she thought he’d be a decent person, the old Josh was back.

“Why are you being dismissive?”

“Look, I know a big conspiracy theory is a lot of fun. But there’s no way your Tori stabbed that preacher.” Kendall shook her head.

“I didn’t say she stabbed him. What if someone is helping her?”

“Why would that be? And who?” It was clear that Josh was only playing along.

“I don’t know, but Tori is in the thick of this. I can feel it.” Josh picked up the autopsy report and turned toward the door.

“What if we look for a meth head that needed some dough and the preacher was a good target?” Kendall didn’t agree at all.

“You’re the lead on this one,” she said.

“You figure it out.”

“Tracked down the source of the red tape. It’s nothing professional, like I hoped. It’s sold only in craft stores. Our killer might be Martha Stewart.” Kendall didn’t say a word.

“That was a joke,” he said.

“I just forgot to laugh,” she said.

“It might be because there isn’t anything funny about a minister who’d been gutted, Josh.”

“I’m afraid.” Parker Connelly’s adolescent voice came over the phone like a leaky bicycle tire, soft, fading. He was in his bed, the covers thrown over his head like an army-issue pup tent. He had called Tori to pledge his love, to tell her that he missed her. He’d hoped that they’d share a little phone sex. His hand was in the waistband of his Diesel boxers when he dialed, but as the conversation moved from pleasure to murder, he vacated that idea.

“You should be,” she said, her voice cool and direct, “afraid that you will never, never have my legs wrapped around you again.” Parker’s muscles tensed a little and he rolled over toward the wall, his body wrapped in a cocoon of fabric. It was the kind of position that suggested a desire for protection. He could feel his stomach churn in the way that it did when he had to give a speech in front of the class—times one million.

“That’s not what I was talking about, Tori,” he said.

“I don’t know why we’re even talking. Period. Every day that this goes on you prove to me that you’re not the man that I thought you were.” She paused a moment as if to reconsider her statement.

“Not the man I thought you would be.”

“That’s not fair and you know it.”

“This isn’t about fair, Parker. It is about whether or not you love me enough to find a way to protect our relationship and ensure our future. I know you’re young, but honestly, you’re not that young.” The last part was a slam. It was meant to remind him once and for all that while they had played at being lovers and had talked about a lifetime commitment and a future together, he wasn’t quite her equal. He was younger. Immature . He was but a boy. He hated it when she played that way. It wasn’t fun. It was cruel and demeaning. It made him feel weak and insignificant. It made him feel like he imagined his mother might have felt when his father kicked her to the curb. Laura tearfully told her son that she wasn’t sure exactly why Alex had chosen Tori over her, but that she felt it had more to do with what she no longer possessed—and Tori still did. The air under the covers was thinning. He couldn’t really make sense of what she was asking him to do. Maybe there was no sense needed. It was about love, after all. Love, she had told him over and over, cannot be rationalized or explained.

“By killing someone?” He finally asked.

“Killing another person is how we protect our love?”

“Oh, Parker,” she said.

“I have made a mistake. I’ve let you love me and I’ve fallen in love with you. But you don’t seem to understand. This is a war we’re in right now. We are going to have to do things that no one would want to do unless they were in for the fight of their lives. History is full of examples. Think about the Donner party . . . did you study that in school?” Her tone was slightly condescending, but he ignored it.

“Yeah, the pioneers who ate each other in California.”

“Right. They did what they had to do to survive.”

“We’re not stuck on a mountain in a blizzard,” he said. She laughed.

“No, but we’re in a war, and you and I are the only people who can defend our futures. The world will try to stop us. They won’t understand. Your dad. Your mom. Whoever.”

“My mom isn’t a part of this,” he said.

“No, she’s not. But you have to understand, Parker, if she tried to get in our way we’d have to do something about it.”

“Hey,” he said, “don’t talk that way. I don’t know if I can do that last thing you want me to do.”

“You have to.”

“It would be like killing you. She looks just like you.”

“That’s right. And that’s why we need her gone.”

“I don’t know if I can do it.”

“It’s time to grow a pair, Parker. I need a man in my bed, not a boy.”

“I am a man.”

“Then you’ll prove it to me, babe.”

“I don’t know.”

“Look, Parker, killing isn’t as hard as you seem to think. I think I’ve proven that. I wish you would have sucked it up and paid attention. I need you.”

They’d had a plan. Or at least Tori thought they had one. Killing Alex was going to be a team effort because she knew that in order for her to succeed that time, she’d need a partner. The subject was first broached as she and Parker sat in her car overlooking an empty expanse of Puget Sound one summer afternoon. They’d found a place for sex at the end of a long beachfront parking lot. She finished him off quickly—which was a pretty easy mission to accomplish with a seventeen-year-old boy—because there had been so much more to do.

“I want you to shoot him in the head,” she said.

“I hate him as much as you do, but, Tori, he is my dad.” She reapplied her lipstick and turned to face the boy, head-on.

“Biology didn’t make him a father. You know that. Tell me you know that.”

“I know it,” he said, repeating her words.

“You’re not getting cold feet on me.”

“No, it isn’t that. I don’t want to let you down.”

“It isn’t about me. It doesn’t matter to me that he’s screwing that bitch at the office and getting ready to throw me away ... like he did your poor mother.” She leaned closer and touched his chin with her soft, gentle hands.

“Getting rid of him is the price he will have to pay for our freedom.” The logic was peculiar. But somehow Parker understood.

“You mean the money,” he said.

“Yes. It is about the money. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot and a liar. I can’t tolerate either of those, can you?”

“No,” he said.

“You will need to be the shooter,” she said.

“I can’t risk it.”

“I thought you said there was no risk.”

“Parker, there’s always a risk. Making love to you just now was a risk. A cop could have come by. Some do-gooder with an overactive moral compass could see us and turn me in for stealing your youth. That is, if they could tell that I was older than you. You look so mature.” She kissed him and he felt that tingling feeling run through his body.

“Do you want me to go over the plan again?” She let her tongue slip between his lips. They kissed again, this time with more passion.

“I just want you inside of me again. I want us to be able to be together forever. I want us to enjoy each other whenever we want.”

“I want that, too.”

“As far as the plan goes, no need to cover that again. You know what to do.”

Parker had never seen Tori look like that before. Her eyes were cold, almost devoid of life. She stood next to his bed in the guest room and spoke in a scary, quiet whisper.

“You little shit,” she said.

“You are backing out on me?” He sat there mute for a moment, before finally speaking.

“I’m sorry.” Her eyes blazed.

“Sorry? Goddamn you, Parker. We agreed to this. You promised me. You said you loved me and would do anything for us to be together.”

“I want to kill him. I want to.”

“I want things, too. Wanting you to live up to your promises was at the top of my list. But you’ve really let me down. You’re like every other man I’ve ever fallen for. They want what I have, they take it, and then when I want something in return, they shove me aside. I expected better of you, Parker.” He stood up. The teenager was taller than she was, but somehow he shrank in her presence.

The carriage house adjacent to the Victorian held the updated mechanical plant that supported the house, including the water heater, the AC unit, and the redone electrical panel. Huddled on a sleeping bag behind the Lexus and a disconnected coal-fired kitchen stove—a relic from two or three remodels ago—was the shaking frame of a teenage boy. He held a gun stolen from the house across the street. Tori’s voice came at Parker with the sweetness of honey.

“Baby, you have to pull yourself together.”

“I can’t do this, Tori.”

“You can and you will. You have to do this. It is the only way we can be together.” He’d been crying and he detested that she knew it, but he looked directly at her.

“You mean, it is the only way we can get the money. If it was just about being together, we could just run off. You and me. Away from here.” She dropped to her knees. She was wearing nothing but a nightgown and the icy air hardened her nipples to eraser points poking at his face.

“Look, I can’t stay here and try to build you up,” she said.

“Try to convince you. You need to pull yourself together.” Her voice began to carry an edge, and she recognized it. She modulated her words.

“How can you do this to us?” she asked.

“I thought I could.”

“Give it to me. Give me the gun. True love,” she said, “means doing the right thing.” He handed her the weapon.

“Do you still love me?”

“You’re not making it easy, but, yes, baby. I do.”

When it came time to do what they’d agreed to do, Tori stood there naked, her young lover behind her. He was dressed. He was supposed to be the shooter, but he was unable to do what needed to be done. The smell of gunfire filled the living room. Blood had blown back on her breasts. A piece of her dead husband’s brain stuck on her neck, and she flicked it off. Her eyes were ice.

“Fire it.” Parker looked at his father’s body.

“He’s already dead.” She poked the gun in his direction.

“Are you serious? So what? You have to be a part of this. I’m not carrying this burden alone.”

“Tori,” he said. No other words came.

“You’ve got two seconds. Now you’ve got one second.” Parker stepped closer to his father and pointed the gun. His hands were shaking.

“Steady or you’ll hurt someone,” she said. The gun went off, and Tori took it. She immediately pointed it at her thigh and fired. She didn’t even wince.

“Get out now,” she said. Parker didn’t know that she’d made sure that his fingerprints were on the gun. She thought of it as her “insurance policy.” Or one of them, anyway.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Tacoma

The note that appeared at the front desk stared at her, and Kendall Stark stared back. It was like looking at the face of a cobra, ready to lift its head and strike. It was a shark with its jaws wide open and a ladder lodged in it so that all a person had to do was climb down to die. So easy. Just come on inside.

STOP AND THINK. JASON TOLD ME. I KNOW. YOU NEED TO BACK OFF.

Kendall swiveled out of her chair and shut her office door. She turned to face the portrait of her family and the dying fern on her desk. She pressed her back against the door not because she was tired, but because she could barely stand. Her lungs were devoid of oxygen. She felt as if her knees would fail her, like a wooden peg doll that had its pins removed by a terrorizing child. She felt such fear, and she knew that the sender had declared war on her weeks ago. I know you sent this, Tori. I know you are the one. She heard a knock on the door and she spun around.

“Kendall?” The voice belonged to Josh. Now isn’t a good time, she thought.

“On the phone with my mom’s doctor,” she said.

“Be a minute.” She let herself slide to the floor.

The voice on the other end of the line was toffee—sweet, but with sharp, dangerous edges. The conversation between Parker and Tori was spoken in the kind of hushed tones reserved for those who do not want others to hear.

“What is it that you want now?”

“You. I’m waiting for you.”

“Hold on a bit longer.”

“Waiting for you is hard.”

“Really? I like that.”

“Not that. You know, I miss you.”

“You miss making love to me.”

“Yes. I miss everything about you. I want to hold you. Taste you. Be inside of you.”

“Patience.”

“You said it wouldn’t be much longer.”

“Mmm. Longer. I like that, too.”

“Knock it off. I’m going crazy here.”

“Come to me.”

“Where? When?”

“I’ll make a plan.”

“You’re good at that.”

“Yes, I am.” The bedroom door swung open and another voice cut into the conversation. It was Parker Connelly’s mother, Laura. He set the phone down.

“Hey, don’t you knock?” he said, his eyes blazing annoyance. She noticed the phone in his hand.

“Who were you talking to?”

“Were you listening? A friend.”

“A girlfriend?”

“Mom, that’s none of your business.”

“All right, Parker. You’re right. None of my business. But you can’t blame me for wanting to know what’s going on with you. Come on, get up. Let’s make a run to Costco.” Parker didn’t move. Noticing the placement of his hands under the covers and the redness of his face, the first Mrs. Connelly knew why. She averted her eyes and backed out toward the door.

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” she said, shutting the door.

“Okay, Mom. Next time you come in my room, knock first.” He put his phone back to his ear.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“Your mother’s a control freak. If she finds out about us, you can expect nothing but trouble,” the toffee voice said.

“I love you, Tori.”

“I love you more, Parker.” Parker turned off his phone. A quick cleanup and he’d be ready to go to Costco. Laura Connelly reached for the knob of her kitchen TV and turned the sound up slightly. Her stomach started to knot. The news was playing a segment about a memorial service for a minister who’d been murdered at his church in North Kitsap. The name of the church scared her: Lord’s Grace. She’s seen that name before and she knew where.

“Ready to go?” She turned to see her son.

“You look like crap, Mom.”

“I’ll be okay,” she said. God, I hope we’ll all be okay.

Tori Connelly’s face fell like a chocolate soufflé four minutes after serving. The summer before she made her plans, she opened the Blue Chip Benefits envelope addressed to her husband. What? It was as if a lightning bolt had struck her in the heart. The words were direct, incontrovertible.

“Pursuant to your request, the change in beneficiary is complete. Sole beneficiary is Parker Adam Connelly.” She carefully folded the insurance company’s missive and returned it to the envelope. She considered attempting to reseal it, but thought better of that plan. She’d torn it when she passed a silver letter opener along the seam across the top. Instead, the only solution was to destroy it and pretend it never arrived. Quietly, she walked into her husband’s office and turned on the shredder. In a second the letter had been turned into confetti. Confetti she would use to sprinkle over his grave. Tori knew what was coming next. Alex would leave her for that bitch he worked with downtown. He’d make up some lie and try to wriggle out of everything he’d promised her. Like her mother had. Like Jason. Like Zach. Like all of them. Her heart was racing, pounding like a broken drum inside her chest. Damn him. Damn all of them. I will not be set aside by anyone! Tori drew a deep breath and made her way back to the master bathroom. Never again! She turned on the cold water faucet, filling the white basin of the vintage pedestal sink. Never! She splashed the water against her face. Over and over. Water puddled all around her, but she didn’t care. She was fighting for control, for reason, for what she would do next. I can do this! She was trying to pull herself together. She didn’t cry. She didn’t want to open her emotions for the world to see. She’d been good at hiding them before. Tori had been adept at going with the flow. Tori knew that her answer was the teenage boy playing World of Warcraft in the bedroom down the hallway. She’d seen the way he’d looked at her. She could think of at least two million reasons why she was going to do what she must do. She thought of it as a test, a challenge to determine if she could still get the job done. She stripped off all her clothes and stood in her closet, facing a row of dresses. The black wouldn’t do. Neither would the white. But the red one, that one seemed perfect. Like the other two she considered, it was strapless. She slipped into the red dress, holding it close to her body as she walked into his room.

“Parker, will you zip me?” He looked up at her.

“Sure, hang on. I’m almost done.” She let her hand slip just a little so that from the boy’s vantage point on the bed he’d get a glimpse of her breast. It was a move that at once was both deliberate and devious.

“I don’t mind waiting,” she said, her voice soft.

“You’re so good at what you do. Keep playing, Parker.” By then, he’d stopped, of course. His eyes were fastened exactly where she wanted him to look. She didn’t say another word. She didn’t have to. The beginning was messy, awkward, and unfulfilling. But she never said so. That would ruin everything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Seattle

Penny Salazar and Adam Canfield had been assigned the task of managing the incoming items for the Class of ’95’s Fifteen Minutes of Fame Auction. Adam knew that meant Penny would stake her claim as the “chairperson” of the event and “solely responsible” for making it a success. He was fine with that. It’s a bunch of crap anyway, he thought, as he surveyed the contents assembled in the hospitality manager’s office at the Gold Mountain Golf Club, the staging area for auction items.

“Awesome,” Penny said, pointing to a lacquered black box with a trio of white herons painted on its gleaming surface.

“This is going to bring in beaucoup bucks.” Adam pretended to agree, but he said softly, “If you have bad taste and twenty bucks, maybe.”

“Huh?”

“Love it, Penny,” he said.

“Love it.” She looked at him, not sure if he actually did love it. Adam was so hard for Penny to read. Adam knelt down to inspect the single item that caught his interest. It was a Victorian dollhouse that looked handcrafted in the way that suggested it could be pawned off as a piece of folk art. Folk art, the kitschier the better, appealed to Adam.

“I might bid on this myself,” he said.

“I didn’t know you still played with dolls.” He refused to take the bait.

“You’d be surprised, honey.” Penny shrugged and looked over a set of carnival-glass cat figurines that she thought she might bid on. Adam bent down and lifted the house.

“Wonder if there is a label here or if this thing is completely handmade.” When he scanned under the front porch he noticed the writing. It was written in red-brown.

“I know who killed Jason Reed.”

“Jesus, Penny, check this out.” He scratched it with the edge of a dime.

“It isn’t a red crayon. Something else.” Penny set down the glass cat and went over.

“That’s freaky,” she said, bending close to take a better look. Adam’s eyes met hers.

“I agree. But it’s more than that.” Penny stood.

“Just some kid saying something stupid. Mad at someone.” He shook his head and reached for his phone.

“I’m calling Kendall,” he said.

“She needs to see this.” Penny put her hand out and gently pushed the phone away from Adam’s ear.

“Wait a minute,” Penny said.

“We need the money for the auction. I overspent. We can’t have the cops involved here. They might confiscate this or something.” Adam ignored Penny and dialed Kendall. Of course she overspent. She ran the committee like she ran her life. Right into the ground. Fifteen Minutes of Lame, indeed.

Kendall Stark was running on fumes as she and Josh Anderson hovered over the dollhouse collected from the class reunion committee’s Adam and Penny. A phone call to the woman who’d donated the dollhouse for the fund-raiser revealed its chilling origin.

“My kids outgrew it, and we’re moving to a condo,” the woman said.

“I know that it was made by the prisoners at the reformatory. I never saw any writing on it.”

“Tori was there,” Kendall said as they turned the house on its side on the counter in the Kitsap County crime lab.

“Maybe she blabbed to someone there,” Josh said. Kendall prepared to swab the first letter of the message with leucomalachite green.

“We’ll have to send it out to the state crime lab for DNA testing,” she said.

“If it is blood,” Josh said. Almost instantaneously, the LMG turned the tip of the swab a pale green hue.

“It’s blood, all right,” she said, putting the swab into a tube and sealing it in a plastic bag. Next, she took photos of the text.

I KNOW WHO KILLED JASON REED.

“Written by a lefty,” he said, noting the smear and slant that came with each letter. Kendall nodded.

“The question is not only who wrote this, but when?”

“And why?” he asked. Kendall put the packet with the swab into an envelope and logged the date, her initials, and the case number for Jason Reed.

“Yes, why would someone write a message like this in the first place? Seems like a heavy burden,” she said, not wanting to say what was really on her mind. Not to Josh. Not to anyone. It was as if Jason were calling out to her.

Actually, it wasn’t fun to dream. Not when the dreams came at her like the most cunning stalker, through the darkness that swallowed every trace of their invasion before finding her under the covers. At first, Lainie O’Neal had begun to see insomnia as a gift, a respite from the dark dreams that ice-picked at her when sleep finally came. Doctors told her that her insomnia was something that she used as a defense mechanism, a response to real or perceived trauma. In one dream, the house in Port Orchard was very, very quiet. In her mind, Lainie thought that she and her sister would both select the phrase “quiet like a tomb.” That was when they still could joke about such things. The way that children sometimes do.

“Black makes you look thinner, you know,” Lainie said to Tori.

“Funny. I thought you were the fat twin.” Lainie spun around and looked in the mirror, her hand on her hip. She caught Tori’s gaze and flat lined her expression. Neither girl was fat. Both were lithe, blond, blue eyed, fine boned. They were petite for their age—fifteen—but there was nothing particularly fragile about them. The same could not be said for their mother—the reason they were dressing in black that morning. Vonnie O’Neal was an exceedingly tragic woman who’d suffered postpartum depression with the twins to such a severity, she never seemed to pull herself out of it. Having the twins was too much at once. More than she could bear. She once confided to a friend that her girls took her figure, stole her husband’s attention, and made her into “someone’s mother, nothing more.” She telegraphed her less-than-joyful take on motherhood with everything she did. No love was doled out without at least a sprinkling of resentment. For as long as they could remember, their mother had done nothing to give them much of a reason to love her. She slept most of the time. She abdicated most of the childrearing duties to a series of nannies and babysitters. She let her husband do all of the nurturing. Lainie put on a jacket for the ride to the memorial.

“Are you going to miss her?” she asked.

“A little,” Tori said, opening the bedroom door. They found their father at the kitchen table. His callused hands cradled his handsome face. Despite what she’d done and all he’d been through, it was obvious that Dex loved his wife.

“She was a fighter, girls, wasn’t she?” Dex said. Tori nodded.

“Yes, Daddy, she was. We were lucky to have her as long as we did.” Tori used the term “Daddy” as a way to endear her father to her. It was completely at odds with the way she talked about him behind his back. According to her, he was weak. He was not ambitious. He let a depressed woman chart the course of his life. He held his forefinger to his lips.

“We can’t tell anyone how she died,” he said. And there he was, protecting her once more.

“I can keep a secret, Dad,” Lainie said, the tears flowing. Tori nodded.

“I can, too.” Dex reached out for the girls and pulled them close against his chest. Lainie started to cry, feeling her tears absorbed by the lightly starched cotton of his laundered and pressed shirt. Only one of the girls knew the true depth of the secret, a secret she’d never tell. Their mother’s death was classified by the coroner’s office as “accidental,” but those closest to her knew that ruling was a gift that allowed her survivors to carry on without the specter of a suicide and the implications such deaths frequently bring to those left behind. Vonnie had taken a fistful of pills for depression and anxiety and went to sleep. No one saw her take them, but when her stomach was pumped the night she slipped into a coma, the doctors recovered more than ten that had not yet dissolved. It was a party mix of pills for a party that never took place. Vonnie did not leave a note. She merely said “good night” and went down the hallway to bed. As she had when the family cat had died, Tori seemed to hold up better than her sister or father. She cried when there was someone there to see it—if the person was the type to pass judgment on her emotions. One time she told Lainie that “tears are for the weak or those who pretend to be so that others won’t judge them.” It was easy for Lainie to know which category Tori fell into. She was that consistent. Lainie, on the other hand, could barely get over the very idea their mother was gone. Her own depression sent her farther and farther down a path that sometimes made her question her own stability. I don’t want to be like her. I don’t want to end up like her, she thought. Of course, she wouldn’t. Unlike her mother, Lainie was a survivor. Both O’Neal twins were. Just in very different ways.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Tacoma

Darius Fulton lawyered up lickety-split, which certainly was no surprise to anyone. He protested that what made him look most guilty was nothing more than an error in judgment, not a clue to his culpability or complicity in a crime. He’d never once harmed anyone. Plus, he said there was no proof. Because there couldn’t be. Oh, really, Detective Kaminski thought as he prepared for a meeting between the person of interest and his lawyer. The crime lab determined that the partial print on the murder weapon matched a latent one recovered from the Dasani water bottle that Kaminski carried from the interview room with a Bic pen inserted into its neck after the meeting in which Darius Fulton confessed his indiscretion with Tori Connelly. It was true, as Darius insisted; all of that could easily be explained. It was his gun. His fingerprints should be on it. But an e-mail to the police department’s community web page sent by an anonymous tipster had changed things. There was something else suggesting that Fulton had done more than covet his neighbor’s wife. The e-mail came in from a Kinko’s rent-by-the-hour PC, and plainly indicated that Fulton was obsessed with Tori.

“Get his computer,” the tipster wrote.

“You’ll see.” Later that afternoon, Darius’s lawyer, Maddie Crane, a glossy-haired woman with an expressionless Botoxed face and a penchant for seeking out the red RECORD light of a TV camera, made a succinct statement to the media in the lobby of her Tacoma law firm offices.

“Yes, my client had a relationship with the deceased’s wife. We don’t deny that. But that’s the sum of his involvement here.” A young man from KING-TV in Seattle was the only one to get a question out before she ended the press conference.

“Wasn’t he stalking her? Didn’t he bombard her with phone calls and e-mails?” Ms. Botox’s fluttering eyelids were her only indicator of a reaction. She almost bent the folds of her face, but the ’tox had done its job.

“Statement over,” she said curtly. The KING reporter winked at a newsroom associate, a woman he’d been flirting with for six weeks.

“See what I mean,” she said.

“It’s all about the tips.”

“You going to tell me how you knew?” the young reporter asked. He put his hand on her shoulder, a touch that sent a chill down her spine and reminded her why her father hadn’t wanted her to go into TV in the first place.

“Nope. Just a call. Just knowing the right people.” In actuality, he, too, had received an anonymous e-mail.

Eddie Kaminski and four uniformed officers served a search warrant on Darius Fulton’s residence. His computers—a desktop and a laptop—were confiscated, as was a stack of DVDs and CD-ROMs. Among the electronic equipment was a video cam feed that emanated from the Connelly home across the street. The camera had been placed behind a Thomas Kinkade painting.

“Guy was a major stalker,” a cop told Kaminski.

“A regular Steve Jobs with all this electronic surveillance crap. Probably has an app on his iPhone that allowed him to keep an eye on her no matter where he was.”

“Sick, twisted piece of crap.” Kaminski nodded.

“Yeah. He’s as good as going down for this.” Kaminski recovered another item tucked into the cushions of the sofa—a black ski mask.

“Looky here at what I’ve found,” the detective said, holding it up with the tip of a pen. Forensic specialist Cal Herzog grinned at the discovery.

“Boom! This guy’s done,” he said.

The camera used to feed images from the Connelly place to Darius Fulton’s residence was a wireless model manufactured by Lorex. Eddie Kaminski told the lab guys that he’d chase down the model number with the idea of determining just where it had been purchased. None of the credit card receipts thus far indicated that Darius had purchased a unit. Stalkers are more paranoid than their victims, he thought as he scrolled through the database display of suppliers on his computer. A box of pizza with congealed cheese and pepperoni beckoned from the corner of his desk, but Eddie Kaminski was working as hard on his case as he was on his waistline. I will not eat another bite, because it is too damn wet outside to go running. The model number in question was sold in only Best Buy and Radio Shack, which ordinarily would be good news for a detective trying to determine who had purchased the camera. However, the fact that their Internet sites also sold the cameras made it a lot harder to determine their point of sale. Any thought of heading over to the Tacoma Mall and presenting a photo display of cops and a suspected killer was dashed. It was possible that the cam was purchased online, but the techs examining Darius Fulton’s computer had revealed no such transactions. In fact, apart from the e-mails they’d easily discovered at the first examination, there was nothing else to tie the neighbor to his victims.

In his pristine lab on the second floor, Cal Herzog cataloged the ski mask recovered from the Fulton residence. It was black with three holes for the eyes and mouth. REI manufactured the item of wool poly-blend yarn. It was of the type that could be purchased online or at any of the recreational company’s retail stores. As he worked through the process of examining the mask, two things were remarkable and Cal made note of both of them. First, he noted that there were absolutely no biologicals around the mouth or eyeholes. No saliva as would be expected. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities—he’d once examined a woman’s blouse on a rape case that was clean as a shirt off the rack at Macy’s. Blood from both Alex and Tori Connelly was found, though a greater amount of her blood was present than his. Of the three hairs recovered, two had intact follicles, making them candidates for nuclear DNA testing. One was too damaged, but the other was in good shape. The third hair was shorter, darker, and without the benefit of a follicle. It would require the more comprehensive mitochondrial DNA testing. Later, when the tests were complete, only one person’s name was on the report: Darius Fulton. The third hair? Unknown .

Tori’s words resonated in his ear. Tori knew that the right delivery ensured the prize—no matter what it was that she was after.

“Use cash for everything, babe. I’ll make sure you have the money. Never, ever use a debit card.”

“Only people over forty carry cash now,” he said.

“Yes. Only an old fool would carry money in his wallet. Plastic is so much cleaner.” He played the conversation over dodging raindrops as he left his hand-me-down Camry, a crappy gift from his father. He loathed his dad for being an ass, first to his mother, then to Tori. Doing what he needed to do was getting easier with every step. His heart rate escalated as he entered the west end of the Tacoma Mall. The place smelled of popcorn and damp clothing. He noticed the pimply-faced clerk, probably his age, as he went inside Radio Shack. There was no one else in the store.

“Hey,” the clerk said, sauntering over to the video cameras where Parker stood, his shoulders hunched and his hands stuffed inside his dark-dyed jeans.

“You looking or buying?” Parker glanced at him.

“Buying.”

“Excellent. We’ve got a sweet sale. Do you know what you want?” Parker shook his head, though he already knew what he wanted. Tori had been specific. She always was specific. Her clear-cut instructions would make it easier when the time came.

“How do those Lorex cams work?” he asked.

“Like Jason Bourne,” the clerk said, “on a road trip.”

“Awesome. I’ll take one.”

The day before the intruder killed her ex-husband, Laura Connelly and Parker had a fight that left her to contemplate the difficulties of motherhood with half a bottle of Riesling and a tub of Dreyer’s vanilla frozen yogurt. He’d been moody since his most recent visit with his father. It wasn’t that he ruminated about what a jerk his dad was; it was how much he wanted to return to North Junett.

“I want to live with Dad again,” he said.

“We’ve been over that. You’ve made a commitment and you have to live up to it, Parker. That’s the way life is.”

“I hate it when you say such bullshit.” Laura winced.

“Parker, I don’t think you should talk to me like that.”

“Why not?” Parker asked, now standing close to her.

“I can talk to you any way I want. I’m not some little kid who can be shuffled around by you or Dad or anyone. You know, I’m not going to be pushed around by someone like you. The day I turn eighteen, I’m out of here.”

“I’ve never ignored you,” she said, backing away.

“More bullshit.”

“Parker, please.” He turned away.

“I’m going to spend the night at Drew’s.”